Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast: Communications Intern
By Zoe Burnett
The fall semester of 2023 was my third semester working with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) as a communications intern. I have grown my professional relationships with my coworkers at Planned Parenthood even more this semester. During my time as an intern, I have also made connections with community partners and leaders who are passionate about reproductive rights in the broader New Orleans area.
This semester, I had the pleasure of collaborating with the PPGC team to host the Fall Celebration, an annual gala with donors and activists hosted by PPGC to rally support and fundraise. Louisiana can be a hostile environment for reproductive rights, and the past year and a half contained numerous trials and attacks against women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and maternal health. The Fall Celebration was an empowering experience that helped me visualize the sheer numbers of support Planned Parenthood has in the New Orleans area. Working in reproductive rights can be challenging in a state that has dismantled many of the avenues PPGC has taken to uplift reproductive health, but the Fall Celebration showed me how many people truly understand how important this battle is and want to support Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
My previous semesters at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast consisted of outreach for sex education, health, voting, elections, and events through social media. This semester, I am most proud of a TikTok video I created for the Louisiana General Elections on November 18th. I also assisted my supervisor in conducting interviews for features on ProFrequency, the radio talk show dedicated to Reproductive Rights and Justice on WHIV. Another project my supervisor and I are working on is collecting the history of Planned Parenthood in Louisiana. Finally, I wrote formal interview questions to gather the history and stories of the state of Louisiana, our founders, and the creation of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.