Hello everyone and welcome to my internship blog! This summer I am interning for the Speak Up Program, which is an educational initiative run through the Family Justice Center (FJC) of New Orleans. The Speak Up Program is implemented by the FJC in a few high schools in New Orleans. The curriculum of the program works to prevent teen dating violence by teaching about healthy relationships, signs of teen dating violence and what to do when in a violent relationship or when someone you know is in a violent relationship. The site of my internship is within the Family Justice Center, which is in downtown New Orleans, but much of my work will eventually be carried out in the high schools once school starts up again.
The Family Justice Center is essentially the hub of all the domestic violence resources in the city. The center consists of many different offices and houses almost all of the services that victims of domestic violence can utilize including attorneys, social workers, child care, the teen advocacy (Speak Up) program, an educational center where women can prepare to test for their GED, immigration attorneys for women that are not citizens and the domestic violence unit of the police department. The FJC also has many partnerships offsite that they can send women to, including shelters and temporary housing.
As far as my internship responsibilities go, I’m mainly helping the Speak Up Program out with gathering their baseline data in order to guide the direction of their curriculum. In other words, I am helping conduct research on the current situation regarding teen dating violence in New Orleans. It is evident that teen dating violence is a problem in New Orleans, because it is a universal problem and New Orleans has a high rate of domestic violence in general. Teens that abuse or are abused have been shown to be many times more likely to repeat such patterns in their later life, which is why this issue, especially in New Orleans, is a very serious and important problem to be addressed. However, there is currently no published data on the problem in New Orleans. Therefore, my job is to fix that.
Up until now, my tasks have revolved around developing a survey to gauge the scope of the issue in New Orleans and really familiarizing myself with the basics of teen dating violence. As the summer progresses, I will continue to revise the survey and work on ideas for implementing the surveys in schools. This part will take a lot of planning and drafting letters to schools seeking permission to give the survey out to their students. My job will also include applying for Tulane IRB approval so that the research can be used for scientific and practical purposes. In addition, I will be attending meetings with our partner organizations that are pertinent to the teen program and I will be attending various trainings and conferences on youth empowerment and domestic violence in general.
I am really excited about my internship, as it is exactly what I was hoping to find for this summer. Lucky for me, the NCI put me in contact with the right person to communicate with at FJC. I had emailed them early in the year because I had worked with them before on a previous project and knew I wanted to try to intern for them if they had space. Sadly, I never received a response to my initial email. However, after dropping by the NCI and talking with Kaitlin Splett, she gave me a contact that was able to refer me to my current boss, Jennifer. I owe NCI not only for the financial support this summer but also for providing me the opportunity to pursue my academic passions. Thanks, NCI!
My first week was seriously great. It was a perfect balance of relaxing and invigorating. I already got to attend a conference with my boss in Baton Rouge about building assets amongst youth and how to help spark success in youth’s lives through the relationships we hold with them in our programs. I was also given time to review current surveys and data on teen dating violence on a state and national level. I feel as though I have already learned a great deal and it’s only been about a week. I also get along really well with my boss and am very impressed by all the work she has done so far. Everyone in the office is super supportive and very friendly. I can tell that the Family Justice Center is truly an alliance and that all of the people on staff really care about the work they are doing to help damaged families.
This summer I hope to better understand how to research with at-risk populations as well as have a better understanding of the obstacles that organizations like the Speak Up Program have with implementing helpful resources into the school system in New Orleans. I want to leave this position knowing that the research is ready to go for the fall semester and having a solid understanding of the problem of teen dating violence in New Orleans.