November 29 - December 5

This week was the week of our Fashion Show Viewing Party!!!!!

Monday we started out with a morning meeting at Starbucks to go over all of our plans for the week. We lined out who had what responsibility and a timeline for the next 24 hours. It was a great experience splitting up the work and trusting that your work parter will do what is expected from them. After our meeting I went to Party Galaxy to get the decorations, plates, cups and utensils. Then to Target to order balloons for our party. I also confirmed our reservation to use our venue. After I ran errands, I created a Facebook event for our party, and invited all the people we had already invited. It was my first time to create a Facebook event, and it was a great learning experience regarding social media. I thought the Facebook event would be a great reminder about the event, as well as the location and time.

Tuesday was the big day! I went to Walmart and bought the food and drinks we needed for the party. I also order a platter of Chick-fil-a nuggets for the party. Then I headed to Kappa Hall to start setting up for the event. I had to set up over 60 chairs and get the tables set up as well. After I had Kappa Hall initially set up, I went to pick up the chick-fil-a platter, as well as many bags of ice. I returned and finished setting up the food and the smaller decorations. We opened the doors at 8:00 and the party lasted until 10:00. The party was a huge success! We had almost 50 girls attend, we gave away raffle drawings during each commercial break and I think everyone had a great time! After the show everyone stayed around to talk for a while, and then we had to clean up and put up all the chairs. Tuesday was such a long day, but it was such a great feeling to know that all our hard work had paid off! It was the first time I was 100% in charge of planning such a large event and it was an amazing learning experience! It was also SO fun!

Later on in the week I uploaded pictures and emailed back and forth with Caroline about how great our viewing party turned out!

Monday 10:30-11:30 a.m. and 2:00-6:00 (5 hours)

Tuesday 3:00-11:00 (8 hours)

Sunday 3:00-3:45 (3/4 hour)

This week = 14.75 hours

Total = 152.5 hours

November 22 - November 28

Happy Thanksgiving from PINK by Victoria Secret!!!!!!!

November 15 - November 21

Early this week I worked on the different recaps we were doing for our Happy Project. The first recap I put together was a power point presentation with pictures, captions, summaries and our donation numbers. After I uploaded all the pictures I had taken throughout the duration on our clothing drive, I resized the images and then cropped them. Cropping and resizing the pictures wasn't hard but, it was definitely a time consuming process. I carefully chose what pictures to use, and created the slide show around the pictures. After several hours of changing and rearranging, I finally finished the slide show and emailed it to our boss Caroline.

On Tuesday, I put together an essay as a recap of our Happy Project. I just wrote out all that we did to make our project successful, the challenges we were faced with, our final outcome and what I would change or do differently the next time I planned a philanthropy event. After I finished the essay, I also emailed it to Caroline for her to show to the marketers at Victoria Secret. Sharing our recaps allowed for Caroline to verify our work on campus as VS Pink Interns.

On Thursday, I put all our receipts together and mailed them to Caroline for her to have as a verification of our donation numbers. Thursday afternoon Shay and I met to finalize plans for our fashion show viewing party. Since the viewing party was right after Thanksgiving break, we really wanted to make sure we had all our plans outlined and our budget planned out. For food we decided the best idea would be to get vegetable and fruit trays, cupcakes and cookies, and chick-fil-a nuggets. We ordered all that we could in advance, and wrote down prices and where to get the things we couldn't pre-order. We also budgeted in cups, plates, napkins and utensils. From there we decided how much of our left-over budget we should spend on prizes and how much we should spend on decorations. It was a great experience working with a budget and really searching for the lowest possible cost on different items. We set a very detailed outline for our party so that when we returned from Thanksgiving break it wouldn't be overwhelming.

On the weekend, Shay and I both contacted our sororities about the event. We were hoping that those close to us would be especially supportive. We ensured that our fashion show viewing party invite would be printed in the weekly newsletters, as well as announced at chapter meetings. I also created a Facebook event and invited as many girls as I could. We were really doing everything we could to make sure we had a lot of people attend. It was really great practice and experience working with social media and traditional media tools to get the word out about our party. Event promotion is a huge part of public relations, and I was able to get experience planning my very first event!

Monday 7:15-10:15 (3 hours)

Tuesday 3:00-5:00 (2 hours)

Thursday 11:00-12:00 and 4:00-7:00 (4 hours)

Saturday 12:00-1:00 (1 hour)

Sunday 3:00-4:00 (1 hour)

This week = 11 hours

Total = 137.75 hours

November 8 - November 14

Food and Friends Shelter

Sorting Clothes at the Shelter

This week was the sprint finish to the end of our Happy Project clothing drive. Early on in the week I had a phone conference with Caroline to discuss our progress with our project. She was really enthusiastic with all that we were able to accomplish, and with the fact that we were really close to our goal of 2,000 donations.

Wednesday morning I devoted to collecting, sorting, counting and delivering the clothes to the shelter. The process I was quite familiar with at this point still took a long time. It was time-consuming to go by all of our donation locations, and the bags and boxes of clothes were really heavy! It was a task that was much easier done with two people, but unfortunately I had to work alone on Wednesday. Dropping off the clothes at the shelter, however, made all the hard work worth it! At first I was really skeptical to go to the shelter by myself, because being around all of the homeless people in the part of Norman that the shelter is located was really out of my comfort zone. But the more thought I put into it, and the more I went to the shelter, I realized it was a really great reminder that there are people in need all over the world. I too frequently get caught up in my own life, and living in my "college bubble", that visiting to the shelter was a really great reality check.

Wednesday after noon, I met with Shay. We started to really think about our Fashion Show viewing party. Since we already had our location set, we just brainstormed on what to do for food, prizes and giveaways, music and decorations. While we were brainstorming ideas, we were also checking prizes on the internet. We only had a few hundred dollars to spend on the viewing party and it was surprising how expensive food and decorations could be. We spent time working out our budget and deciding how we were going to allocate our money.

Friday was the last day to pick up clothes from the donation spots. I repeated the collection process and brought the last batch of donations to the shelter. We exceeded our goal of 2,000 items and were able to collect 2,007!!!! It was such a great feeling to know that we were able to meet our goal. Everyone at the shelter was so thankful for all that we had done and knowing that we were able to help that many people was such an awesome feeling!

Saturday I spent cleaning up after our project. I went to all of the donation stations to pick up the empty boxes. I also took down all the flyers that we had posted on campus. Lastly, I took the cardboard boxes to a recycle center. It was a great feeling to finally be done with our Happy Project.

Monday 11:15-12:15 (1 hour)

Wednesday 10:00-1:00 and 3:00-5:00 (5 hours)

Friday 11:45-2:45 (3 hours)

Saturday 12:00-1:30 (1.5 hours)

This week = 10.5 hours

Total = 126.75 hours

November 1 – November 7

Sorting and counting donations

My car loaded down!

Picking up donations at the Greek houses!

This week was the heart of our clothing drive, so we really did what we could to promote the drive and collect as many donations as possible. I took time to go to each of the greek houses where we had set boxes, and remind them of our project and what we were trying to do for the community. I especially promoted the drive at my own sorority house.

I put together a short press release about the project to email out to all of the greek houses. It was great practice writing a press release, and I really took time to follow the format that I had previously learned in my "Writing for Mass Media" class. I went to my sorority advisors and presented the press release I had written, along with a plan to increase the amount of donations we were receiving. My plan was simple. For girls in my sorority, an absence would be removed from their attendance if they brought in 5 or more articles of clothing to donate. I presented the plan to my entire chapter at our chapter meeting that week. Everyone was really excited to help!

On Tuesday I went around to all of the houses to pick up their donations for the week. We had more donations turned in than the previous week, and we were really feeling optimistic about our project! It took a while to collect all the clothes and to sort them out and count them. At my own sorority house it took an especially long time, because I had to record the names of the people who donated, as well as sort and count the donations. I bagged the donations up and loaded them into my car to take to the shelter. It was a really great experience for me to use my problem-solving skills to work out a way to increase the amount of donations we would receive. It was a great feeling to think out the plan, create a press release, present the plan, and then have it turn out to be a great success!

Throughout the week, I had been in constant communication with our boss, Caroline, via email. I was keeping her updated with our efforts, as well as the results of our clothing drive. On Wednesday we had a conference call. I talked with Caroline about how I felt our progress was going, as well as how much help I was or wasn't receiving from the other OU VS intern. Caroline was really supportive, and was really helpful in giving other ideas we could use to get clothing donations.

As a further effort to collect more clothing donations, I called, texted, and emailed more than twenty of my friends that weren't affiliated with a Greek House. On Thursday evening, I went around Norman to collect the donations from my friends. They were all so helpful, and excited to be able to clean out their closets. Driving around to the different houses and apartment complexes took a long time, but it was definitely worth it! I collected almost 300 donations on Thursday night alone!

On Sunday, Shay and I went to the multi-cultural sorority and fraternity meetings to collect donations from them. Since they don't have houses on campus, there was no where for us to set up a collection box. So we emailed them earlier in the week to ask if we could come to their meetings to collect clothes. The email told them about the project, and asked them to bring donations to the upcoming meeting. It was a really great experience to speak to a different group of people and they were really helpful with our project! The different student groups donated almost 400 more articles of clothing just on Sunday night. Our donation numbers were really increasing rapidly!

Monday 7:00-10:30 (3.5 hours)

Tuesday 3:00 - 6:00 (3 hours)

Wednesday 3:00-4:00 (1 hour)

Thursday 7:00-9:00 (2 hours)

Sunday 6:00-9:30 (3.5 hours)

This week = 13 hours

Total = 116.25 hours

October 25 - October 31

This week we continued to work on our Happy Project. On Monday, I received a check from the Victoria Secret Headquarters and I went to cash it, so we would have a budget to work with for the remainder of our Happy Project and for our Victoria Secret Fashion Show Viewing Party. I had trouble cashing the check because there are no branches of the bank that I use for my personal use in Oklahoma. I had to go to the bank from where the check was issued. They required I had two forms of Identification and the whole process took almost an hour. Wednesday I met with Shay, and we started to sort the first round of all of our donations. We went to the different houses where we had set the boxes to collect the donations they had gathered thus far. We were a little disappointed with our first round of donations, but it was only the first of our three week project. We tried our hardest to remain optimistic. After we counted and sorted the clothes, we bagged them up to take them to the shelter.

Thursday I filled out surveys online for the Victoria Secret merchandisers. They are coming out with a new fragrance collection, so I answered questions to help them decide what they should name the new collection. I also filled out surveys to help them decide what the packaging should look like. The new collection will be released next August, right before back-to-school shopping begins. I love filling out the surveys and questionnaires on the VS Pink Intern website. The questions are fun, and it's an exciting feeling to know that I'm helping determine what the next Victoria Secret merchandise will be. I also like scanning the Victoria Secret Intern website to see what the other interns at the other colleges are up to. It's great to share ideas and to receive feedback from our peers.

On Friday, I tried to brainstorm other ideas for different ways that we would be able to get clothing donations. I contacted the owner of Plato's Closet in Oklahoma City. Plato's Closet is a place where you can sell your new or gently used clothes, and then they resell the clothes. However, they only take clothes in good condition and that are in season. So, a lot of the time people bring clothes to sell but Plato's closet won't take them. We thought it would be a great idea to set a table outside of the local Plato's closet branch. We faced a problem because the Plato's Closet manager said that we had to get permission from the owner of the property. I spent almost half an hour unsuccessfully trying to get in touch with the property owner. The whole process was really frustrating and I was never able to get permission.

On Saturday, I bagged all of the collections that we had collected thus far and took them to the local Norman shelter that we decided to support. The shelter is called Food and Friends. We received a receipt from a worker at the shelter so we can keep records of all the clothes that we donate.

Monday 12:15-3:15 (3 hours)

Wednesday 3:00 - 6:00 (3 hours)

Thursday 4:00-6:00 (2 hours)

Friday 11:30-12:45 (1.25 hours)

Saturday 3:20-4:20 (1 hour)

This week = 10.25 hours

Total = 103.25 hours

October 18 - October 24

Happy Project Flyer

Happy Project Boxes

This week we really focused on getting things ready for our "Happy Project" clothing drive. On Monday, I went to get all of the boxes for the donations to be put in. We just got simple cardboard boxes from a local U-Haul store. I also designed the flyers that we would put around campus and on the donation boxes. I took time to decide what would be eye-catching, simple and would give all of the needed information. On Tuesday, I went to a local printing shop and had many copies of the flyers made. I had some trouble because I designed the flyer on a Mac and the computers at the printing shop were Windows. With a little extra effort and some assistance from a man who worked there, we were able to figure out a way to print out the flyers. I waited at the printing shop for the flyers, to ensure they came out just the way I wanted them to. On Wednesday I assembled all of the boxes and attached flyers to the outside. Also on Wednesday, I emailed back and forth with the chapter presidents of all of the Greek houses on campus. We arranged times for Shay and I to come by and speak to the chapters about our project. Everyone was really eager to help us with our efforts! On Thursday I dropped off boxes at two different sorority houses that wanted to give donations, but didn't find it necessary for us to come and speak to their chapters. On Sunday, I went to four different chapter meetings to speak about our project and drop off the boxes for the donations. It took all evening to drive to the different locations and give our speeches, but it was necessary to speak to the chapters to spread the word about our project. It was a little bit nerve-racking to speak at the first chapter, but after the first speech I gave, I was able to warm up and the rest of the chapters I spoke at were fun and I was really able to relax. We set times and dates to go by each of the houses to pick up donations, and let everyone know that the last day to drop off clothing was November 12.

Monday 3:00 - 5:00 (2 hours)

Tuesday 4:00 - 5:00 (1 hour)

Wednesday: 2:00 - 4:00 (2 hours)

Thursday 5:15 - 6:45 (1.5 hours)

Sunday 6:00 - 10:00 (4 hours)

This week = 10.5 hours

Total = 93 hours