The Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) is the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education in England and Scotland.
Founded in 1903, the WEA is a charity dedicated to bringing high-quality, professional education into the heart of communities. Last year we helped 28,219 students, with the support of nearly 2,000 volunteers, 900+ tutors and over 6,000 members.
We got the low down from two students who spent time gaining valuable work experience.
The placement provided Gabrielle Lafaix, from the School of European Culture and Languages with first-hand, professional experience in digital marketing being responsible for drafting social media posts to inspire WEA students to book on their courses, alongside researching other organisations to create a campaign to encourage people to subscribe. Furthermore, she planned and designed a 2-week social media campaign highlighting how getting involved with the WEA can benefit people’s wellbeing.
Gabrielle said: ‘One thing in particular I liked is that most of the tasks required me to be creative. For the social media posts, I had to find different subjects that could appeal to people in order to make the WEA brand stand out. I also had to come up with ideas on how they could improve their strategy, comparing to some of their competitors. It was both interesting and challenging.’
Jonathan Gardener also undertook social media work experience with WEA. A digital marketing postgraduate from Kent Business School, Jonathan’s role at WEA involved Facebook auditing, copywriting, scheduling posts and survey writing/advice. He had this to say about his experience:
‘Volunteering definitely looks good – even the small amount I’ve done and what I did on it has already been commented on positively for an opportunity I’ve had, so I’m glad I did it and it’s the first experience I’ve had using skills I’ve learned on my course.’
WEA generously provided work experience opportunities for eight EP students, more information about them can be found here.
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