Stephanie Casey, marketing and fundraising manager with Oxfam Ireland, enjoys working with motivated people in a truly great job
This is my sixth year in the job and I can honestly say that no two days have ever been the same. As a member of the Oxfam international confederation with 13 independent affiliate members involved in emergency response, long-term development work and campaigning in more than 90 countries worldwide, the daily information flowing in via e-mail is quite considerable.
I try to start each day by reading up on any emergency updates and press releases that have come in from Oxfam International. I then move on to reading press clippings from our media tracking service and any relevant coverage of areas affecting our work. We are constantly looking for novel ways to promote Oxfam's work to the general public.
At the moment, we are promoting our Oxfam Garden initiative. We are asking members of the public, community groups and schools to grow plants and shrubs for sale in our shops around the state. We will provide seeds, materials and encouragement. Seeds and gardening materials are also on sale in 13 of our shops and from our website.
We have recently sent a letter to the regional press from our director Dr Brian Scott, to thank the public for their wonderful response to our Pakistan earthquake appeal. We are also trying to highlight the worsening food crises in Kenya, Somalia and Malawi.
September to December is our busiest time for fundraising and we are still processing income and analysing the results of our Oxfam Unwrapped alternative gift catalogue which we launched last October. This was an incredible success in 2005. The public really responded to the tangible fact of giving a gift like a goat or a cooking stove that will actually be used by the people we work with in Africa.
A lot of my daily work is planning new fundraising appeals and ideas with my team. We try not to inundate our supporters with appeals for money. In fact, several of our communications are newsletters and e-mail updates just to inform them how their money is being spent.
One of the key areas of my job is ensuring that what we do is effective. No matter what we do, we have to be accountable to both our supporters and the people we work with around the world.
It is my job to ensure that we use our resources efficiently and ensure that we develop activities that are cost effective.
Luckily I am surrounded by a really motivated group of people who are always willing to go the extra mile. We also have a wonderful team of volunteers who help us out on an on-going basis.
As with every job, it's ultimately the people around you that make the job worthwhile. The sense that we are also connected to the lives of people far away, who are working incredibly hard to make better lives for themselves, makes this a truly great job to have.
- (In conversation with Ali Bracken)
For information about the Oxfam garden initiative go to
www.oxfamirelandorg/
oxfamgarden