Sarah W, Northeast PA

I can’t believe this is it…

Last Saturday we table at NEPA PrideFest in Kingston. On a serious note, it was a really great experience and we got lot of post cards signed for both Sex Ed and Health Care. However, there were some very comical parts too. My favorite was this little five year old girl that just walked up to the edge of our table and just stared at me. Obviously she thought that we had candy or toys to pass out, however; all I had was a huge basket of condoms—definitely not appropriate for a 5 year old! So she just kept staring at me for what felt like an eternity. Finally her mom came over. This little girl looked up at her mom, pointed to the condoms and said "Mommy, what's that?" (Perhaps she thought I was holding out on her and really did have candy?). In response all her mom said is "Honey, those are for adults, and hands her a lollipop." It was great.

Yesterday, Anne came up for her final visit. I cannot believe that it has already been 10 weeks. I am optimistic that the work that we did on Sex Ed and Healthcare will be effective.

I also want to say ‘Thank you’ to Anne, Sara and the other staff members that helped make this internship possible. And I want to say “Hey” to the other interns, even though we weren’t all together; we’re working together for the same thing! I wish everyone the best of luck in everything they do!

Sarah P, Southeast PA

As we reach the end of our internship, our focus has made an exciting shift to include Health Care Reform as well as sexuality education. Taking on this new campaign has meant doubling our efforts: now we do two phone banks a week, one for sex ed and one for health care reform, and we have divided up our canvassing and tabling as well. HCR calls two weeks ago to "spank" legislators who had let us down were tough, while calls last week to urge people to attend town hall meetings went a little better, despite problems in Southeastern PA with Activate. At the Locust Street Center in Philadelphia we have also been doing other miscellaneous health care reform activities, such as making and decorating boxes for people in our health centers to put HCR postcards into. The other interns and I enjoyed about two hours of arts and crafts with this activity, cutting up information and images and other PP paraphernalia to decorate the boxes. We are planning on a HCR visibility event this coming Thursday, after the phone bank. However, sex ed is still central to our internship. We've continued to phone bank determinedly: during the latest phone bank I reached a woman who told me her daughter was in 4th grade so promptly that I thought this meant she was going to yell at me, but as it turns out she wanted her daughter to start learning sex ed as soon as possible.

For our latest canvass in Barbara McIlvaine-Smith's district we were rained out but were able to call through all of our walk sheets, which felt great. One woman who signed a postcard for me before the rain told me that she is a practicing minister with 5 kids who wants to come be a patient escort for us, as the protestors at the West Chester office are so vocal and aggressive. She said that she wanted the people who come to protest in the name of religion to see a religious person on the other side of the issue. Clarissa and I have also gotten several people who've selected the "make a contribution" box on their sex ed postcards. The support is exhilarating.

Tomorrow is the last late night phone bank, and I am definitely geared up for it and for the last week of the internship in general. It will be sad to have it end, but I feel like I've learned so much and have really developed my passions to extend to other areas of my life. I know that I will always care about and do what I can for sex ed and for health care reform, and I'm so grateful to Planned Parenthood and this internship for that!

Gemma, Northest PA

Sarah W and I are going into the last week of our internship in Northeastern PA. This summer went by so fast! We’re both really excited to be tabling NEPA Pridefest this Sunday. We haven’t been able to table an event yet, so I think this is going to be a great experience. We’ve still been having some challenges with our ability to go out and canvass (namely the weather). It’s been so frustrating to go to a turf and knock on doors for about an hour and then have it start raining. Other than that, Sarah and I have had fun and it has definitely been a great experience. I will miss having conversations at someone’s door about comprehensive sex ed and hearing a person’s story about why they support the issue. It’s really exciting to know that there are so many supporters out there and that people appreciate and are positively affected by the work Planned Parenthood does. It has been a challenging and very rewarding experience.

Juliana, Southeast PA

Everyone likes house parties…so what could be better than a SEX ED house party? The Southeast Interns hosted one at Haverford College last week. We publicized it through Facebook, had to reschedule once because of thunderstorms (what else is new?) but ended up having a very fun and successful evening! We managed to obtain over 25 signatures on our petitions for comprehensive sex ed. We also had a bunch of activities. First was a piñata filled with candy and condoms, but it was hit open on the second try – unfortunately, the participant in question was a baseball player. We also played Sex Ed Quizzo to educate guests about our political work in Pennsylvania, and we offered “Women’s Health Matters” T-shirts as prizes! Two of our supervisors, Alisa and Audrey, surprised us by showing up – needless to say, they won the Quizzo game, but graciously agreed to relinquish their trophies. Finally, we had a condom blowing-up contest – whoever could fill a condom with the most air and tie it off would win. However, the contest quickly converted into a game of condom volleyball. The Southeast interns also showed off our cooking skills – we made homemade spicy bean dip, hummus, salsa, and lemonade. All in all, it was a great way to involve our friends in the work we’ve been doing all summer – we highly suggest hosting one in your area!