“Empowerment Through Education with Ms.”
By Christine Cabusay
This summer, I was privileged enough to work as an editorial intern for Ms. Magazine (Ms.), a radical feminist magazine that was also the first of its kind in America. During my first weeks at Ms., I learned how to write and edit articles for Ms.’s online platform, practicing capturing readers’ attention while also making information easy to process and remaining unbiased in my reporting.
In collaboration with a fellow editorial intern, we wrote an article about how young people’s voter turnout was in response to the issues they cared about being in jeopardy, including, but not limited to, women’s rights and advocacy. As we were writing the article, we wrote about how the pending decision about Roe v. Wade would potentially trigger increased voter turnout in the incoming midterm elections. Right as we were about to send the article out for final edits, Roe v. Wade was overturned. It was with great disheartenment that we had to edit the article to reflect the changes. Instead of anticipating a world without the protections of Roe v. Wade, we were reckoning with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its consequences.
This brought me to working with Ms. Classroom, a sector of Ms. focused on producing accessible and affordable digital educational resources. My Ms. Classroom-specific project was working with an existing article database to create an article index containing Ms. articles about reproductive health and justice, with classroom use in mind, so that in the incoming school year, teachers and students would be able to explore their reactions to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its role throughout that past couple of decades.
Feeling empowered by what I learned in my quest to create a complete article index, I sought to work directly with a younger audience. So through Ms. Classroom, I was able to connect with Girls Learn International (GLI), an educational nonprofit that works with middle and high school students to advocate for human rights and equality in the U.S. and around the world. Specifically, I have been shadowing GLI’s Summer Activist Training Camp, an online camp that equips high school students to be active leaders in their community, and helping to create a resource guide that the campers can look back on and utilize as they continue their journey as activists after the program ends.
In a post-Roe v. Wade world, where access to information and resources is crucial in advocating not only for others but also for oneself, I am excited to continue to do my part in making sure young people are equipped with the knowledge and language they need to defend their rights.