X - PUBLIC RELATIONS

Press reports and radio and TV coverage are important means of letting people in the community know about the ISSE program. Some schools put newspaper clippings, snapshots and memorabilia from each partnership into scrapbooks which can be available for others to look through and thus share one aspect of "international school-to-school experience". Because the purpose of ISSE is to help people all over the world, while they are still children, to become aware of and to better understand their peers in other countries, it is important that more and more schools, in one's own and in other countries, hear about and join the ISSE network. One of the best and easiest ways for participating schools to help spread word about the ISSE program is through magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV. The media should be contacted before and after your team of ambassadors visits your partner school, and while the partner school's Visiting Team is at your school. If ISSE is well presented in the media reports, parents and other schools will become interested in having a part in the international experiences. Important word of caution: In talking with the media representatives, emphasize that the purpose of ISSE is to provide international contacts and experiences for all the children in your school. Otherwise reporters and photographers are likely to devote their attention primarily to the few children who are selected to be Hosts and Visitors. This misplaced emphasis can cause people in your school, as well as the community, to assume that the ISSE program is organized for the primary benefit of only a few, and therefore they may well hesitate to support it. For instance, be sure to have a photograph taken of the Visiting Team in classrooms with younger children, and of their assembly program for the entire school. A photo showing only the Visitors and their Hosts is "a natural", but it gives a misleading impression.