10 December 2020, Cagayan de Oro City – Following the success of the recent Enhancing Communication Skills Training, National Nutrition Council X held another T&D- Training and Development on Public Relations (PR) Writing, Documentation of Good Practices and Success Story Writing held on 4 December 2020 via Zoom.
The training was participated by NNC regional office staff, Nutrition Action Officers (NAOs), District/City Program Coordinator (D/CNPCs), Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNSs), and Nutritionist-Dietitians of Department Health’s Human Resource for Health Program.
Facilitating the training was Mr. Edgardo “Gardee” U. Pacalioga, an active member of MANGO DIEZ (Media Advocates for Nutrition in GOvernance for Region X), and a freelance writer/editor.
Building beneficial relationships through writing as nutrition workers indicate a successful public relations campaign. Moreover, the training aimed to develop NNC X staff and nutrition workers in PR writing.
Mr. Pacalioga challenged the participants to know the basics of news writing before becoming a PR writer in his introduction.
A public relations writer creates content for internal documents and articles to be released to the media and other public channels. He mentioned the need to monitor the publication of a written article, to measure how effective you are as a writer.
In the first part, the speaker discussed PR writing, PR writer and role, principles and practices, clear effective writing on public relations, and the important qualities of good PR items. Public relations professionals at all levels need to have solid writing skill (“expert”), and to influence the attitude and behaviors of key public, Mr. Pacalioga highlighted.
Also, he distinguished and compared public relations writing from news writing and journalism. As a good practice in public relations writing, he emphasized that it is important to do research and that documents should be based on facts to avoid misleading information. He encouraged participants to do self-editing of their works before handing it over.
The afternoon session was on success story writing. Accordingly, a success story is making a difference in people’s lives that is more than a list of events, and a good success story uses evidence. Also, one of the goals of a success story is the sharing of good practices as the speaker mentioned.
Also, he shared a few of the articles he wrote on the success story. He gave tips and recommendations on writing a success story that would interest the readers, and attract them to keep reading until the end. To end his discussion, Mr. Pacalioga hoped he was able to give ideas among participants in deciding which nutrition program they should write on for a success story.
Participants were able to share their responses on PR and success story writing. As the training is immensely helpful for the NNC staff and local nutrition workers, the activity was well-appreciated. Mr. Pacalioga reminded the training attendees to write to express not to impress.
Regional Nutrition Program Coordinator (NPC) Gladys Mae S. Fernandez gave her closing message as she recognized the time and effort Mr. Pacalioga allotted for the training to be the resource person. The importance of documenting will serve as a valuable reference for the Local Government Units (LGUs) in nutrition development planning as a testament to successful advocacy on proper nutrition. Also, she challenged regional office staff to improve more on their writing outputs and participating LGUs were encouraged to share their own articles to the regional office for posting on the NNC X webpage.
Moreover, NPC Fernandez announced to include news article writing, social media improvement, and other writing documentation as part of the T&D Plan for next year. (ND II Angelique Jean Maggay)
