Eugene Lin Week 5: Personal Contributions

My main role in the American Red Cross is to assist in communications and outreach for two departments: Biomedical and Disaster Relief. I have had a chance to meet many great people and work with them. My biggest contribution was the development of a blog site for the Richmond Red Cross chapter. The blog site had been outdated for a year and I made many modifications to make it more user friendly and professional. Developing this blog site was something I had no experience doing prior. I learned everything on the job, and through trial and error. Nonetheless, I was thrilled with the results. On the blog site, I was even able to attach add-on’s linking the Red Cross’s social media platforms on the front page. It makes the overall viewing experience more pleasant.

More importantly, I was able to use the now established blog site to complete another one of my assigned projects. My communications supervisor had tasked me with increasing the accessibility of our monthly newsletter. In the American Red Cross, we have a monthly newsletter documenting the highlights and announcements of the Richmond Red Cross chapter within that month. As a result, I researched many different type of programs we could use to achieve this goal before I realized that the newsletter could be posted and stored on the blog site. After testing different ways to format the newsletter file, I was able integrate the newsletter onto the blog site. This new system for the newsletter is beneficial in several ways. Before, the newsletter could only be shared through American Red Cross email accounts. Not only does this new method make it easier to access the newsletter in one cohesive database, but now the newsletter is no longer limited to just Red Cross staff and volunteers. Once the newsletter is posted onto the blog site, it becomes very easy to share the link on the American Red Cross’s social media platforms.

Besides these two main projects, I made other several contributions to my organization. I have created a presentation to attract potential donors and gathered news to include in the newsletter. My most regular assignment is to create and schedule posts on our social media sites.