Reaching out to the community

Like I have mentioned, the Town of Fountain Hills is very small-town focused, so the residents there are very involved in community activities and policies, and are active in decisions regarding the town. One of my responsibilities working in the Community Affairs department was to compose town-government press releases and post them to the town's website. These ranged from community events promotion such as senior citizens activities as well as information from the recent town council meetings and details on town infratrucutre and bugdet concerns. Residents from the town looked forward to these postings, as keeping up with the latest community news is extremely important to them.
Check out the lastest news from the Town of Fountain Hills.
http://www.fh.az.gov/news.aspx

A bit about the blogger....

I will intersperse information about myself and my internship experiences throughout this blog space. I thought it only natural to share a little about myself first! My name is Samantha (Sam) Sanchez and I am a second year MPP graduate student at the ASU School of Public Affairs. I also received my undergraduate degrees in Journalism and Political Science from ASU. I currently live in Ahwatukee, with my fiance Carlos and I work full time for the Girl Scouts as a Public Relations and Communications Coordinator. I am also involved in advocacy and government relations work, as part of my job at the Girl Scouts. That is me in a nutshell! Stay tuned for future posts about me and the insider's scoop on the Town of Fountain Hills.

My first day as an intern

When I first received the call that I had received the internship with the Town of Fountain Hills, I was extremely excited and a bit overwhelmed ; I realized I only had a basic understanding of how the town operated. Because the town is unlike most other communities in Arizona, I had a lot of learning to do. On my first day I began researching archived information, press releases and studies of economic development of the community to get myself familiar. Since I was working for the Community and Government Affairs department, it was vital that I know as much as possible about the town's communication and operating system. As part of the internship, I also had to create a social media plan for the town, as well as a government calendar of key items the public should know about. The preliminary research was extremely useful here as well. I had never seen the fountain before accepting this internship and it really is a refreshing sight! The community definitely had a small "town" feel and it was like I had driven into a different world. Check out the town's website for some background information on how it operates.
http://www.fh.az.gov/

Welcome to my blog!

This space will be used to share my experiences working as an intern for the Town of Fountain Hills Community and Government Affairs Department. You will also get to know a bit about me in the process! Stay tuned for upcoming posts containing photos, press releases and my perspective "from the inside" of the Town of Fountain Hills.