Von Robert Edomi, Media and PR Manager

Barking and Dagenham Council

My Role:

I am a Media and Public Relations Manager for Barking and Dagenham Council. My role involves managing a team of four Media and PR Officers responsible for all media and public relations activity for the authority. In this role I have to protect and raise the council’s reputation, advice officers and elected Members on media relations issues as well as be responsible for managing crisis situations.

The Challenge, Why did you apply?

I applied for the Local Government Challenge because I saw in it an opportunity to educate the general public on the complex roles people working in local government provide and how it impacts on their everyday lives. It is also an attempt to give local government staff across the country the opportunity to see the bigger picture. For staff to see and think far beyond their immediate roles as refuse collectors, social workers and dinner ladies to the difference she made to the lives of ordinary people. Charity begins at home and I see the opportunity to participate in the challenge as a chance to make a greater number of local authority colleagues become advocates for their individual authorities and local government in general.

What would you do with the £10,000 scholarship if you won?

I would be most interested in using it to look at the impact of local government provision in changing inner cities. I will want to explore how local government working with partners in the statutory and voluntary sectors have made a difference to communities. My objective will be to impress upon thousands of local government employees across two or three continents the difference they make daily in the lives of ordinary people - something, which in my opinion staff across local authorities have sadly failed to comprehend.