Regional Eye Centre (REC) staff at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) and stakeholders were trained on the 26th of May on how to collect information in the field when rolling out their eye health programs for news articles, social media postings and donor reporting.
The training, which was facilitated by the communications team of The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ, aims to equip participants with the knowledge and skills to be able to ask the right questions and collect relevant information including capturing of quality photos for the REC clinical and administrative reports including for external communication.
Head of the Eye Department, National Referral Hospital, Dr. Carole Poloso explained that the training is important as outreach programs to communities around the country is part of their Annual Operations Plan and therefore the need to showcase their work with photos and stories both to the public and the donors who continuously provide important support towards the work of Regional Eye Centre.
“Moreover, for external communication, though the Ministry has its media team, they may not always be able to accompany us to the field due to competing priorities and therefore the training will enable us to assist our media team with content and photos”, explained Dr. Poloso.
In terms of internal reporting to the Ministry and donors, Dr Poloso explained that it will enable them to include photos with descriptive captions or paragraphs that would make the reports attractive and fun to read.
“Moreover, the training also enabled us to acquire photos with consents from patients which will enable us to use for our reporting but also awareness and advocacy purposes. At times our donors also request photos from us for which we do not have consent.
"As such, a huge thank you to The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ communications team for this support and we look forward towards working closely with our media team here on for the gathering, production and dissemination of eye health related articles and reports”, said Dr Poloso.
Source: MHMS Media