“My name’s Angel and I’ve recently started volunteering within the communications department at Citizens Advice in West Sussex.
I graduated over the summer with a degree in Philosophy and knew I wanted to pursue a career in Public Relations (PR), however I lacked the experience I needed to get straight into it after university.
I had a look online for local opportunities and found that CAWS was looking for Social Media Volunteers – exactly what I was looking for! I’ve been volunteering for around a month now, doing a few hours once a week in the afternoons which has been really easy to work around my work schedule due to their flexibility.
I’ve been working alongside Beth, the communications and marketing officer, who’s shown me different tools I can use to create posts, schedule them and come up with my own ideas for the social media pages, using sites like Canva, Hootsuite and Mailchimp. Volunteering has given me the means to gain experience in a field I’m interested in by teaching me various new skills such as creating graphics, writing posts and newsletters and giving me the confidence to put forward my own ideas and contribute to our social media pages (including this post!).
Through my involvement with CAWS, I now have more of an understanding of how to use social media to bring awareness towards a business/ brand which will be a very helpful skill when I begin a career in PR. I would highly recommend volunteering to anyone who’s thinking about it, it’s been so beneficial to me – I’ve learned a lot, gained valuable experience and met some really lovely people.”
