Knowing Me Knowing You

Many of my blogs have been spent discussing my actual work at the Eye Hospital and I have therefore neglected the best part about working at the office…the people who work here! They are quite an eclectic bunch and all have something truly unique to bring to the table. So I thought that I would take a bit of time to tell you a little but more about them….

Nicky is the Head of Fundraising and Marketing here at the Eye Hospital. Well I think ‘Head’ is quite an understatement (perhaps Guru of Fundraising would be more fitting)! It has been amazing to work alongside Nicky because she is absolutely incredible at her job. She somehow finds a balance between being passionate about her job, being generally brilliant at fundraising and lastly (and I think most importantly) she makes the time to listen to and be thoughtful to those around her.

Dominic is the Eye Hospitals Communications and Administration Officer. I think the best way to describe him is Nicky’s right hand man. He is one of the hardest working and most dedicated people I have ever met and is truly enthusiastic about working here. I spoke to him at the beginning of the week and he was telling me that over the weekend he had been thinking about one particular task he had been doing at the Eye Hospital. Well, I think you will join me in taking my hat off to him, as there are not many people who would be thinking about work at the weekend! He is probably one of the nicest people I have ever met and is always chirpy and good for a chat. Also, he is probably one of the biggest coffee and tea drinkers I have ever met too!

Geof is our Trusts and Campaigns Manager. Most of my work here at the office has been under the guidance of Geof. He has given me the responsibility of some interesting and complex projects such as the Adwords campaign. We have been given a charity grant by Google to advertise The Eye Hospital on the Google search engine.  So, I have been working with Geof to construct the format of these campaigns.

Earlier on in the week, we were having a team meeting and we spoke about Geof’s work on the website and on Jerusalem Scene. It really struck me how talented Geof must be in order to create such a professional looking website. Also, he often looks over my blogs before I have pasted them on the wall…and generally he makes sense of my my ramblings! His writing ability with writing and editing Jerusalem Scene goes to show he really is a talented chap!

Faryal is the Fundraising and PR Officer.  I first met Faryal when I was working downstairs at the International Office when she came to chat to me about the work at the Eye Hospital. Even from our first meeting I was struck by how passionate she is about human rights in the Middle East region. Even from our first meeting I remember thinking- gosh she is passionate and bilingual, she really is an employer’s dream! Whenever we strike up a conversation she always has something really interesting to say. We were chatting about human rights yesterday and she was telling me about a piece of research that she was thinking about doing which contrasted the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories to that of the status quo in Australia. When I asked her whether she was thinking about doing a PhD in this interest, she replied ‘no it is out of personal interest.’ Well, I think that is incredibly admirable, that doing this piece of research is out of personal gain as oppose to academic credit. Perhaps a sign of a ‘true academic!’

Lisa is the Administration Executive for the London office.  Most of her work is dealing with the finance side of things here at the Eye Hospital. We were chatting the other day about her career and she has worked in an impressive list of charities. She is such a lovely lady, down to earth and so easy to get on with.

It is funny, because I was thinking to myself, why haven’t I told you a bit more about these people before, but then it struck me that I wouldn’t have been able to give you quite an accurate representation of each person until now. Well that’s all for now ladies and gents….I’ll be back tomorrow for the last hurrah at the office…which will see the return of Nick (previous intern)….

Trials and Tribulations

Happy September!

My task for the last two days was to help JP (John Punter- our lobbyist) to gather research about hiring a new intern/volunteer. The purpose of this new postgraduate post will be to work with JP on Public Affairs and PR. The intern will be provided with a six month comprehensive traineeship which involves experience of some of the basic processes which govern UK and EU political processes, helping to draft and implement a public affairs programme/plan and an understanding of PR and the various elements which make up the media and how it supports public affairs work.

So for the last two days I have been researching possible London universities that we could contact in order to recruit this new postgrad intern/volunteer and also the legality of the employment of volunteers and interns.

The issue of legality began a few days ago when I was reading an article about the contention that law firms may be breaking the law if they are not paying their interns the national minimum wage. Aside from the intricacies of the employment law, the article touched on the contention that these law firms were preventing social mobility because poorer individuals were less likely to be able to undertake these internships. The key message from the article being surely at least the top law firms could afford to pay their interns the national minimum wage. There were a wide variety of opinions on this article and some that said that the legal profession should be in the hands of the rich and wealthy. While I shall not directly comment on this statement, surely the wealthiest law firms should be promoting SOME diversity.

The volunteer or intern at the Eye Hospital will be working for a world renowned non-for-profit organisation; they will be chosen solely on their merits and will be gaining vital experience in a sector that is very difficult to break into. My experience working for The Order of St John for the past two months has been hugely beneficial to my knowledge and skills in the charity sector.  For me the best thing about working for St John has been working within a small team. This has allowed me to work alongside individuals who are incredibly skilled and knowledgeable in what they do; it has also allowed me to take on a great amount of responsibility and to gain a wide array of skills.

Well, I PROMISE that the next blog will be a little less serious!- but I thought that the views of this article were worth sharing…..until next week….

Lx

Map of the occupied Palestinian terratories

I hope you have all had a relaxing and enjoyable bank holiday!

My time at St John Eye Hospital is really flying by. It was already a week ago that I wrote my last blog and yet it feels like only yesterday.

Last Wednesday and Thursday were mostly spent revamping the Tumblr page. Like I have said before, I have never been particularly up-to-date with technology and so this has been a real learning curve. I am yet to buy an iPod and I was bought a Kindle for my birthday which I am yet to turn on, four months later! So I am really enjoying learning about new technology and – who knows – after this, I might even turn my Kindle on…

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I have also spent a bit of time looking into the celebrity ambassador’s project.  The premise of the project is to find a well-known person who could represent the Hospital Group as an ambassador. We hope that this will generate more supporters and followers of our organisation.  When Nick (the previous intern) gave me his hand-over document, I was a little bemused to find that he had been trying to contact Halle Berry. So when I initially looked at this document I merely thought that he had a crush on Halle Berry and for this reason he wanted to contact her. I was also a little amused to find that he had been trying to contact Nick Jonas (The Jonas Brothers).  This is because I knew of Nick’s love of all things Disney (Sorry Nick!) which led him to the Jonas sibling. But as I started my research into likely celebrity ambassadors the penny began to drop. Nick Jonas has ‘type one’ diabetes and Halle Berry has ‘type 2’ diabetes.  Diabetes is important to us because it is pandemic within the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), with 12 to 15% of the population suffering– three times more than in the West. Complications arising from diabetes can damage the retina and lead to blindness.  Diabetic retinopathy affects up to 80% of all diabetics. It is the main cause of blindness amongst the working age population across the globe.  So it would seem that Nick did have a credible reason for contacting Halle Berry…

With only just over a week until the end of my internship I have begun reflecting on my experience of working in the St John Eye Hospital Office. I feel that I have gained some valuable knowledge working here– such as a broader understanding of the on-going difficulties and the need for medical care in the region. I became interested in charities and the work of non-governmental organisations while I was travelling in southeast Asia before my degree where I was able to gain first-hand experience of the vital importance of these organisations in this region. I took this passionate interest into my degree and wrote my dissertation focussing on the use of food aid as a foreign policy tool.

While I had this basic knowledge and interest I did not know a great deal about the OPT and the work of charities and non-governmental organisations in this area.  From working at the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group London office I have developed an understanding of the issues in the OPT, and in particular the need for eye care in the region, where the rate of blindness remains ten times higher than in the West.  We need to get busy!

Well that’s all for now folks, until Friday L x

Exciting new trailer of “Jerusalem” filmed in IMAX 3D and is due to be released in 2013!

All about the techno…

Well after a pretty busy weekend it was quite a relief to get back into the office.

I spent my weekend in Brighton with the girl I used to live with at uni. We filled our time with shopping, eating and generally over-indulging …needless to say my bank balance was looking pretty shabby by the end of the weekend!

It has all been pretty quiet in the office today. Lisa, Faryal and I are in the office and Nicky is off on a mammoth trip to Wales to meet with the new Hospitaller there. This week so far I have been focussing on raising the profile of The Eye Hospital through social media. The members of staff at The Eye Hospital are truly grateful for all the donations they receive from their dedicated supporters. But I hope that the use of social media will help expand this base of loyal supporters and raise awareness of health related issues in this part of the world. So in order to do this I have been maintaining the social media sites as well as building new ones. This has actually been really useful for my own knowledge as I would call myself a born technophobe and this project is forcing me out of obscurity! To disseminate information, I have been using our Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-John-of-Jerusalem-Eye-Hospital-Group/241008222591173 and Twitter accounts: http://twitter.com/#!/StJohnEyeHosp I have also been exploring new forms of social media such as Stumbleupon. Probably the best way to describe Stumbleupon is by calling it website bingo. Basically you enter into Stumbleupon your areas of interest and then it randomly churns out websites you might be interested in.  Well after playing a few round of Stumbleupon bingo, I decided that it probably would not be appropriate for our purposes because there is only a small chance someone would ‘stumble upon’ our website. I then re-launched our Tumblr site http://stjohneyehospblog.tumblr.com/ but I am still working on the layout, so I will keep you updated with that. But perhaps the most exciting thing of this week was revamping the WordPress page. It’s all shiny and new and is definitely worth a look! http://stjohneyehospital.wordpress.com/ From this I have also discovered the use of Gravatar which is a new way to display your contact details http://en.gravatar.com/stjohneyehospital .

Well that’s all the techno goodness for now… I’ll be back next Wednesday for a double helping of the life and times of the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital office!

L x

World Humanitarian Day Blog

And so it’s Friday already; I can hardly believe how quickly this week has gone! After my first blog I was fairly concerned that I wouldn’t have an awful lot to write about in my Friday blog. So I contacted Nick about this worry and he assured me that by the end of the week I would have lots things to talk about- and by heck he was right! I sat down this morning and thought- ‘where do I start?!’

Most of my Wednesday was spent looking at the Google-ads project, the result of a grant from Google.  The premise of the Google-ads project is to use advertising (free as a result of the grant) on the Google search engine to raise the profile of the eye Hospital Group.  When someone types in a key word into Google that we have defined as being associated to our campaign, it will appear as an advert on the Google search engine.On Thursday I had a meeting with the Hospital Group’s lobbyist John Punter who discussed with me the ins and outs of the British political system. His first question to me was ‘so what do you know about the British political system?’ Sitting there I drew a complete blank which led me to wonder what I had been doing for the past last three years. So John gave me a crash course on the British political system and I sat there thinking ‘ahh I remember why I studied politics, it’s actually quite interesting!’

Before starting this internship, I did not know an awful lot about the situation in Palestine and the need for medical care in the region. Whilst reading the paper on the way home I became aware of the difficulties currently going on in Israel and in the Gaza strip. It struck me how fresh the situation there is and the great the need for medical care in the region. It left me feeling proud to be working for a team that work tirelessly to raise funds to develop and expand the eye hospital facilities in Palestine.

It seems fitting that this revalation occurred on World Humanitarian Day - when we should all be thinking about those who do their utmost to help others in need.

Well that’s all for now folks…until next week…

L x