Hello!
I have completed my first two weeks at the Environmental Voter Project and I have learned so much already. EVP is a nonpartisan nonprofit located in Boston, MA and its mission is to identify “inactive environmentalists” and turn them into consistent voters so that politicians will pay more attention to progressive environmental policies.
The Environmental Voter Project was founded just 3 years ago but has quickly established its own important niche in the nonprofit environmental world. With a target population of more than 2.4 million environmentalists spread across four states, EVP works tirelessly to remind these voters of every type of upcoming election, from special municipal elections to presidential elections. Having already contacted many hundreds of thousands of voters, EVP has plans to contact millions more. Our successes have already been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Washington Monthly, among other news sources. Much of our resources and time are spent reaching out to inactive voters with door-to-door canvassing, digital ads, emails, text and phone banking. This last year, EVP expanded into Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. And this work has provided laudable dividends; in the 2016 Presidential Election, for instance, EVP saw a 4.7% bump in voter turnout among our targeted voters for the presidential election in Massachusetts alone. Other elections have seen similar increases, ranging from 2.1% to 6.9%.
When we are not contacting potential voters, we are conducting research projects. Currently, I’m researching Nevada’s and Pennsylvania’s history of voter suppression tactics as a possible tool to be used in a planned mail piece. I’ve learned a lot these last few days about how politicians can strategically manipulate election policy to prevent certain groups from voting. I’ve also been researching about resources that voters can utilize if and when they get confused at the election polls. I was appalled when I realized how many Americans have been stripped of their voting rights, but I also found it heartwarming to find so many groups around the country who has dedicated themselves to helping people exercise their rights. This particular research project really reaffirmed that the work I do at EVP is important and can have a tangible impact.
Since this is an unpaid internship, my supervisor Peter presents a seminar every week on how to navigate the professional world in order to provide our intern class with a well-rounded internship experience. Last week, for instance, Peter gave a detailed seminar about how to write in the style of a business memo and why such memos are important in the professional world. I think that the weekly seminars will really help me learn a lot of tactics to be a professional businesswoman. I have had a great experience in my short time at EVP thus far, and I cannot wait to see how the results of the work we are doing pan out.