Speak Out! is right around the corner!

May 28, 2009

So where should I begin? Oh yes, Kermesse. Attended Kermesse on Saturday and it was wonderful, a beautiful spring day. There were plenty of fun activities for the children, games and snacks etc. it was really exciting to attend an event and see our posters up, our maps that we provided text for, our survey cards. As I walked around Kermesse, I gained a sense of self-worth in knowing that I helped make this happen. Overall it was a great experience and it really taught me how to deal with clients and sponsors.

Now on to Speak Out! I took a stab at writing the story pitch for the event and struggled a lot. Primarily I conducted some research on the Amnesty International website and looked into the case of Tanya Jean Brooks (an Aboriginal woman who was found murdered in Halifax on May 11th). With the information that I found I started off by writing two different pitches, trying to decide which angle will work best. What I found most difficult about my task was the subject, the fact that aboriginal issues are issues that are new to me, and I felt as if I didn’t understand it enough in order to educate other people about it. No matter how much research I did I was unable to wrap my head around the nugget, what was going make people care about the issue and take action. My instructor helped me to structure my pitch and came up with some angles that might help attract people to the story.

After we worked on the pitch for a while we shared it with our classmates and stumbled upon another dilemma. We grappled with the idea that including Tanya Jean Brooks in the story pitch might be an insensitive thing to do, even though our intentions were to bring attention to the issue of violence against indigenous women. We decided not to use her name out of respect for the Aboriginal community and Tanya’s family. As we all sat around the table discussing the pitch and what angle would be best, we continued to hit barriers. The final outcome was to scrap the story pitch and contact the media personally to see if they would be interested in writing a story pitch for the event. This decision was made in order for us to learn from journalist the correct ways in which to tackle a story like this. Contacting the media for the pitch will also help us improve our media relations skills. We will be providing the journalist with facts sheets on the event and biographies on our speakers.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to do a radio PSA which will hopefully be played on the CBC radio station, the TalkBack segment. It was a bit nerve-wrecking at first, as I am unable to hear the PSA before it goes out, I believe I did well. I am extremely excited to hear it though. At the moment I am finishing up the fact sheets so that they can be sent to potential story pitch journalists.

In a way I am a bit more enthusiastic about this event since we were crammed for time and we were all worried if we would be able to pull it off in time. We are now less than a week away from the event and we are well on our way to completion. Everyone has contributed their skills, ideas and expertise to help make this event work, and I am grateful for this.


Tiffani