Midsummer is here and so far, 2018 has been a year of incredible highs for Alice PR.

From our unforgettable work with Together for Yes on repealing the 8th amendment to welcoming our account executive Darragh to the team to Martina's wedding, we're looking back at our highlights of 2018 to date.

Martina:

Managing the launch of Together for Yes was a career highlight, never mind one from the past six months!

Celebrating the referendum results afterwards in Dublin Castle (and beyond) just topped off a great couple of years' working with the Coalition to Repeal the 8th Amendment and on the Together for Yes campaign.

Another highlight has been getting the new cross-party parliamentary group on workplace equality up and running. We've been planning this - as part of our work on Dress For Success Dublin's Equal Pay campaign - for the past couple of years.

The group is chaired by Sen. Lorraine Clifford-Lee, with Sonya Lennon & Angela Smith representing Dress for Success Dublin and Alice PR provides secretariat support. We have lots of exciting plans for the group for the coming year, mostly focused on political awareness-raising and stakeholder engagement.

Another highlight for me was delivering workshops on 'communicating your research' for the HERA network of European humanities researchers in Vienna in March. it's a really interesting project for us to work on - and the bonus was getting to spend time in beautiful Vienna!

Ciara:

My highlight so far has been our work with the Children’s Rights Alliance. We provided PR support for the launch of the 2018 Report Card, as well as on issues like the digital age of consent and child refugees.

The Report Card received fantastic national coverage and highlighted important social justice issues like child and family homelessness and the long waiting lists for children needing community mental health supports. I’m also a bit of a fan of advocacy coalitions – it was the focus of my dissertation – and using the collective expertise of members and a united voice to achieve policy change.

Our work with IMPACT – The Microplastics Awareness Project on their brand development and launch was another highlight. I felt like we were an integral part of the small project team – it was a real partnership.

Together for Yes was, of course, a career highlight! I was particularly proud of our work with the writers of 'Oh My God What a Complete Aisling'. The opinion piece by ‘Aisling’ in the Irish Independent the week of the Referendum really got to the heart how any woman could be negatively impacted by the 8th amendment. And Leo tweeted it!

Aisling has spoken. Please #VoteYes on Friday for all the Sineads, Deirdres, Dearbhlas, Orlas, Maireads and Siobhans who will travel today. #OMGWACA #Together4Yes #Together2Vote pic.twitter.com/ZLuiLpMGur

— Leo Varadkar (@campaignforleo) May 23, 2018

Emily:

Echoing the others, working with the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment and then Together for Yes were massive highlights, especially event managing the launch of campaign.

I also loved working on the Children's Rights Alliance, and the Coeliac Society of Ireland’s annual awareness week is also another lovely project to work on every year - great to see it getting lots of feature coverage.

Despite my initial trepidation, I also enjoyed giving social media / media relations training - I got a great buzz from it and it’s always interesting chatting with the trainees and seeing them progress!

Niamh:

The first project that springs to mind for me is WellFest. Managing the PR campaign for the festival in the lead up to the event, and over the weekend itself was really exciting. It was great to work on an event that we have watched grow from strength to strength over the past couple of years, and being part of that is great! There's always great media interest too, which keeps us busy but loved seeing all the pictures in the papers after the weekend.

Darragh:

I would say, for me personally, working on Dress For Success Dublin's International Women's Day campaign which is so integral to keeping the organisation running was great. Seeing the impact since, in terms of the amount of money raised and clothes donated was amazing.

Working on the The Women's Podcast for The Irish Times was also a brilliant experience, along with all of the other events on the day; helping to raise awareness of the issues around gender equality in the workplace, the causes and solutions, and engaging with Irish businesses to push this up the agenda.

The Symposium on Child Refugees with the Children's Rights Alliance was also a great one to work on, again, raising awareness of incredibly important issues and engaging with government officials with the Minister highlighting that more action is required on the issue.

Eva:

Bringing a delegation from the Irish Research Council to Brussels for a series of meetings was a big highlight for me, being the political nerd that I am!

It’s been said before, but obviously getting to take part in the Together For Yes campaign was absolutely brilliant. I feel so privileged to have participated in such an historic point in Irish history.

Working with SMEs and anything in the tech industry is always a huge plus for me as it’s so exciting to watch them scale, so working with tech start-up and remote-working platform, Abodoo has been a fabulous journey since we started working with them last year.

If you have a project you would like to discuss with Alice PR, contact us today.