Victoria is a junior studying journalism and public relations at Indiana University. She is a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority and is also the director of the Canvas Creative Arts committee on IU’s Union Board. In her free time, Victoria enjoys running and writing.
Last year, I worked as a student ambassador for Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana. As a student ambassador, I worked on marketing Goodwill to students at Indiana University and members of the Bloomington community. My work consisted of hosting events, utilizing social media and a lot of crafting.
Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana focuses largely on giving back to the community. They do this through donations at their stores as well as working to educate people at the Indianapolis Metropolitan High School and The Excel Center, a tuition-free charter school for adults.
At Indiana University, my educational focus is journalism and public relations. This student ambassador position allowed me to apply what I’ve learned in my classes to a real life position. I improved my writing skills, worked with local business owners and student organizations, and learned how to best market to the target community.
The largest project I worked on during the year was an event called Scare and Wear. The event was held the week before Halloween at one of the local Bloomington Goodwill stores. We used the event as an opportunity to market Goodwill to college students as an affordable place to buy Halloween costumes. The event also featured food, contests and games.
The most challenging part of this event was ensuring that my marketing reached the target market of students that we wanted to attend. To combat this, I created a list of students that I wanted to reach and then listed out the best ways to contact them. I used posters, handouts, social media and other outlets to market the event and gain the best outcome of student attendees.
My time working with Goodwill gave me the opportunity to put my classroom experiences into a real-world situation. I enjoyed having the opportunity to work with a non-profit and hone my skills in many different areas of writing, marketing and event planning.
