Charity

SeeHearSpeak charity campaign set to make some noise

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With every new semester brings a new batch of motivated, driven, and charitable Public Relations students here at Algonquin College looking to make a difference in their community.

This year, Algonquin College students have partnered with the schizophrenia program at The Royal Mental Health Centre.

The Royal is one of Canada’s foremost mental healthcare and academic health science centres. Their mandate is to get more people living with mental illness into recovery faster by delivering specialized mental healthcare, advocacy, research, and education.

Schizophrenia is an often misunderstood mental health illness. It can involve a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception.

Currently, there is no method for preventing schizophrenia and there is no cure. Minimizing the impact of the illness depends mainly on early diagnosis and, appropriate psycho-social treatment and medication. This year’s campaign, SeeHearSpeak, aims to change the conversation surrounding schizophrenia by raising funds and awareness.

ACPR (Algonquin College Public Relations) has been involved with charity campaigns for over 25 years and has raised over $300,000 for various local and national charities.

This year’s campaign, SeeHearSpeak, will run through the month of July. It will involve a variety of different events to raise money and awareness for the schizophrenia program at The Royal.

Follow along as our students share information and host a variety of charity events. They include a mimosa brunch here on campus, a stand-up comedy night, an art auction at The Red Lion, and much more. Let’s start a conversation together about this mental illness and help make a change!

Whether you have schizophrenia, know someone with schizophrenia, or want to learn something about schizophrenia you can check out the SeeHearSpeak website.

PR students to make a buzz for local charity

ACPR
Expect our PR students to be busy as bees, and the campus to be buzzing with excitement next term – after hearing presentations from nine groups of their peers pitching on behalf of charities, Algonquin College public relations students have made a beeline for LiveWorkPlay. They will be fundraising for this important community agency through their annual charity fundraiser in the winter 2016 term.

“LiveWorkPlay is an Ottawa-based charity that works with individuals living with intellectual disabilities. Their goal is to help their members gain independence. They achieve this through assisting them with employment, housing, and arranging social events for members to attend,” said Rachel McWhinnie, a public relations student who pitched LiveWorkPlay to her classmates (just call her ‘Queen Bee’). “LiveWorkPlay is all about inclusion over segregation. We are excited to reflect that in our campaign.”

The Algonquin College public relations students will be hosting multiple events, starting in March, to raise funds and awareness for LiveWorkPlay. Last year’s campaign raised more than $26,000 for the John Howard Society. And if you’ll let us wax nostalgic for a moment, over the 27 years of the program public relations students have raised more than $300,000 for 27 different charities (and isn’t that sweet!).

“All of the charities pitched were deserving, and we would have been happy to work with any of them. We are very excited to come together next semester and work with one goal in mind. Everyone is buzzing to work with LiveWorkPlay,” said McWhinnie.

Public relations students have been pitching their charities throughout the month of November. In total, nine charities were originally proposed, and the program has worked with many of the region’s largest and smallest charities, such as the Royal Ottawa Hospital, CHEO, and the Valerie’s Flutter Foundation (apparently our PR students have a thing for bugs…but whatever you do, don’t buzz off as there are plenty of events to come and our students will be looking for your support!)

Here’s a glimpse of how things went down on (in chronological order)…