UWA student intern, Aimee Donaldson, recently completed a 100-hour internship through the McCusker Centre for Citizenship with the Department of Communities, applying her skills to help develop engaging and accessible resources about important changes to child safety legislation.
Aimee’s role placed her within the Working with Children Check Community Engagement Team, where she worked on a project to create accessible and user-friendly content for CaLD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) and Aboriginal communities.
Aimee, who is majoring in Political Science and International Relations, said she met a number of challenges in undertaking the internship.
“Understanding the complicated legislation and reshaping it to be consumable to the everyday audience was one challenge,
“I also learned and mastered two completely new sets of editing software within my 100 hours,” she said.
“My main project was editing a two-and-half minute video, which will be used on a new website later this year, and I also contributed to the content of shared factsheet documents.” Aimee said
Aimee, a Woodlands resident, said her internship gave her an “inside look” into the operation of the Department, which has a broad mission of supporting wellbeing and creating diverse and inclusive communities, and allowed her to see how amendments to legislation in parliament progressed to practical implementation within government departments.
Senior Community Engagement Officer, Jo Gibbs, Aimee’s internship supervisor at the Department, recognised the value of her contribution to the project.
“Aimee made a substantial contribution at a time of significant change in the unit,” Jo said.
“Her support in making the legislative amendments more understandable and accessible to the public was essential to the project.”
One of the reasons Aimee applied for a McCusker Centre for Citizenship internship was a desire to broaden her experience while studying.