My placement: the organisation, sector & my role
For my placement, I volunteered at a charity called FOP friends. This charity works to raise money for the fight against FOP. FOP is the shortened term for Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, an extremely rare genetic disorder that “causes bone to form in muscles, tendons, ligaments and other connective tissues” (IFOPA, 2017). This disease is one of the rarest conditions in the world, with an estimated 1 diagnosis per 735,000–2 million births (Baujat et al, 2017). There are only 900 confirmed cases worldwide, with 60 of these being in the UK (IFOPA, 2017).
If this is something you might be interested in learning some more about, I have linked a short, descriptive clip aiming to help people understand the condition.
The charity was founded in honour of my boss’s son, who is a sufferer of the condition, and has been the face of the charity since its opening. The charity is very small, with less than 10 employees, and has heavy involvement from families across the globe who have been affected in some way by the condition.
My role in the charity was ‘social media organiser’. My job was to produce and schedule content for release on multiple platforms. I was taught to use www.vengage.com for content creation, and www.hootsuite.com for scheduling. I learned the technical skills involved with each website, and what tools to use for specific effects. I can now confidently say these are two tools I would be comfortable using in a workplace environment in the future.
From this placement, I also learned conceptual knowledge about how to create engaging, targeted content. Firstly, the most important thing in content creation is to know your audience. I came to learn that because of the nature of the illness as well as the rarity of the condition, family-friendly content, often featuring people involved with the charity was best engaged with. Due to this, I mostly created “on this day x years ago” content, as well as visual content involving people who work closely with the charity. I also learned simpler yet significantly effective tactics to make content the eye is drawn to, such as which colours and fonts are appealing to the human eye. For example, blue is a good colour to use when trying to establish trust between the viewer and the firm.
I also learned a lot about the charity sector in general. Firstly, it became glaringly obvious just how much charities rely on donations. Without these generous contributions, many charities would be running a deficit almost immediately. Additionally, I learned that regardless of how small a company is, it is no small feat to organise and run one smoothly. Despite the size of the charity I was working for, there was an innumerable number of tasks to be completed every day, and it is nothing short of a miracle that with a team that small everything got done.
References
- Baujat, G., Choquet, R., Bouée, S., Jeanbat, V., Courouve, L, Ruel, A., Michot, C., Le Quan Sang, K. H., Lapidus, D., Messiaen, C., Landais, P. & Cormier-Daire. V.,(2017), Prevalence of fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) in France: an estimate based on a record linkage of two national databases, Orphanet journal of Rare Diseases, 12, 123
- FOP friends [charity], unknown, FOP friends logo (digital image), retrieved from https://fopfriends.com/event/fop-friends-uk-conference-family-gathering/
- IFOPA, 2017, What is FOP?, retrieved from https://www.ifopa.org/what_is_fop
