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!