During my final weeks as an intern at Lift Louisiana, I am wrapping up the projects that I have been working on this past semester. I have helped set up a legislation tracker on Lift Louisiana’s Website. This tracker allows people to easily access pending state legislation that relates to women’s health, reproductive rights, juvenile justice, and many other policy issues. The hope is that with greater access to pending state legislation, Louisiana citizens will be better able to advocate for or against bills relating to women’s health. This work is meaningful to me because it will allow Louisiana citizens to gain a better understanding of potential state laws- hopefully holding lawmakers more accountable to their legislation.
I am placing the final touches on my second project at Lift Louisiana, the advocacy toolkit. This toolkit outlines strategies for advocating for women’s reproductive rights. This work is meaningful to me because the toolkit will be distributed to groups working with Lift Louisiana and will help future advocates build an advocating strategy. The toolkit will also be available on Lift Louisiana’s website, allowing other advocacy groups to advance human rights issues.
As one final project, I will be traveling to Baton Rouge on April 26 to lobby. I will be joining Louisianans for an advocacy day focused on Black Women’s Issues. This day is an incredible opportunity to witness the power of advocacy and to learn more about the intersection of advocacy and politics.
After my Internship, I will be returning to Chicago to work as an Undergraduate Intern at Northwestern Medicine. I am extremely excited to take the knowledge and skills I have obtained at Lift Louisiana to Northwestern Medicine. Upon returning to New Orleans for my senior year, I hope to still volunteer with Lift Louisiana and help with fundraising. I believe that my experience at Lift Louisiana will help me be a life long advocate for women’s health.