During the time that I was in college I held several jobs working with social work organizations. In many of these jobs, my role was to serve as a liaison between the public and the group that we were trying to serve. For example, when I worked with an organization that did home care for the elderly, it was my job to provide presentations to the public about the issues plaguing the elderly population that we were dealing with.

I was a bit nervous about giving these presentations at first because of that whole fear of public speaking thing that most people have. What I learned was that getting the right props for my presentation could greatly increase my comfort. These props would serve as tools to get the audience engaged in the discussion and would also help remind me as to what I was supposed to be speaking about. For example, I would take our home care provider training manual to these presentations to discuss key points about the need for our services.

I also found that props helped to pass the time well in presentations that were going to be long. My favorite props were caregiver dvds (people particularly seemed to like our alzheimer’s dvds) which served to educate the audience while also giving me a brief reprieve from the public speaking!

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