JOANNA GILLESPIE

502 Cougar Village Apt 2A * Edwardsville Il, 62025 * (314) 954-4937 * gillespie_joanna@yahoo.com Friday, January 21, 2014 Jackie Lilly Hunter 454 Welsom Ave. St Louis, MO 63113 Dear Hiring Manager: I feel that I meet the requirements for this position, and I am very interested in becoming a part of the team. I am a senior at Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville. In May 2014, I will complete my B. S in Community Health Education, and my minor in Speech Communication. I believe my background, and experiences qualify me for this position. I am currently an intern at Childrens Hospital in the Child Health Advocacy and Outreach Department, where I have experience in data analysis and data entry, and I am skilled in Microsoft Excel. I planned an event for the Head to Toe program and budgeted the funds for the event. I also have experience in managing clients information, by creating and organizing a binder that contains important paperwork. In addition to this, I have completed my senior assignment project where my group members and I designed a health program titled A F.A.M. I. L. Y. Worship that educated student parents about how to prepare well-balanced healthy meals on a budget; this project has enhanced my leadership skills. During this project, I set up Google Docs in order to establish communication with my group members. I was also granted the opportunity to work with the elderly population by volunteering for service learning at Christian Northeast Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and Rosewood Care Center in Edwardsville, IL. Some of the duties included transporting patients in wheelchairs to their desired location, as well as conducting cognitive-based games, such as bingo and seek and find. Equally important, I served as a caregiver at Home Instead Senior Care; I worked with an elderly individual with Alzheimer. My duties for this client included preparing meals, cleaning the home, and attending to their every need by anyway possible. Through this experience, I believe that I am tremendously dependable because I am available whenever a client is in need. Pursuing this further, I also supervised the elderly patients at Gateway Medical Center in Granite City, IL, to make sure that they did not pull out IVs or get out of bed. With all the experiences working with this specific age group, I have strengthened my patience and coping skills. These involvements have also given me the opportunity to experience cultural diversity, as well as practice my verbal and nonverbal communications skills. I also worked for SIUE dining services for three years, and over the course of time as an employee, I enhanced my customer service skills, problem solving skills, and improved on how to have proper one on one communication with the customers. Additional significant skills that I have to offer is my ability to reach out to different populations and focus on health issues that need more attention. I am very skilled at creating prevention programs; I have had experience in creating a public service announcement for obesity and binge drinking. I selected a target audience, and then came up with creative concepts for approaching the particular health issue. My goal was for the audience to understand the problem itself, and to learn ways to prevent the problem. During the course of this project, I intensified my technical skills by using different computer software to create the video. I have also designed a safety training activity to help parents prevent household fires and burns. This project has enhanced my planning and organizational skills because I was able to work as a team with my group members. I also educated the audience and provided activities to test their knowledge; this was established by creating pre/post-test. I am eagerly looking forward to putting my knowledge and experience into this position. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this position with you, and to answer any questions you may have for me. I can be reached at any time at (314) 954-4937. Thank you very much for your consideration. Sincerely, Joanna Gillespie