As journalism students at Birmingham City University, we have been working on our student placement with Birmingham Friends of the Earth. Our main role has been to create social media content about the campaigns and events taking place in the group on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Throughout our time here, we’ve been given creative control to make content for campaigns such as the Local Elections, Clothes Swap, and the Savages Film Screening. We’ve also worked towards some promotional efforts, such as posting about board vacancies and placement opportunities, as well as bringing attention to important global environmental events. These have been a mixture of informational text posts and fun, leisurely video posts, ensuring we appeal to all audiences.
Our work here has helped us develop skills which are relevant to our course as journalists. However, there are so many opportunities for volunteers to be a part of which you can use to expand a variety of skills.
The community at Birmingham Friends of the Earth is like no other; we’ve felt welcomed from our first day, and the help we’ve been given from other volunteers has helped us blossom. We are extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to work here.
A Message from Erin:
I would highly recommend anyone to do a placement with Birmingham Friends of the Earth. The people are extremely friendly and supportive, and I have expanded my knowledge of global environmental issues because of them. It was easy to ask for help or feedback on our work because of the good communication on Slack and via email, and I feel more confident in myself thanks to the encouragement I received from everyone.
We were also able to be flexible with our time, meaning we could choose when we would work in office or attend events to coincide with our timetables. This made things a lot easier going, (especially for anyone who is struggling to balance everything!), and I cannot thank everyone enough for giving us these graces.
If you chose to work here, you would never feel pressured by other volunteers, your ideas and work will always be carefully considered, and you will be treated with the utmost respect.
A Message from Amber:
Working with Birmingham Friends of the Earth has taught me so much, from how to improve my lifestyle to help the environment, to learning how to be more confident. Going into this role, I was quite nervous as I have never really been a confident person, and I have never done social media work like this before. Yet I don’t think I could have had a more welcoming group of people; everyone is so kind and understanding, and you never feel like you’re not being listened to. Because of this, I feel like my skills have really blossomed and I have been able to learn things more quickly – like how to use Canva, how to engage with audiences, how to use social media strategies to improve posts, etc. I have also really enjoyed getting to know more about the environment around me and learn how even the smallest of changes can make the biggest difference. I never felt pressured to produce anything or attend anything as Noama (the campaigns coordinator) was always so patient and understanding, giving me the chance to get regular support without feeling like a burden. I would really recommend Birmingham Friends of the Earth to anyone, as they are so accommodating and you can learn a range of skills (and you don’t even have to specialise in anything to help them!). If you’re looking for a warm community, wanting to learn new skills, wanting to be listened to, and well looked after, then Birmingham Friends of the Earth is definitely the place.
