Shadow

At Planned Parenthood this week I chose to shadow my mentor, Emily. She is the advocacy coordinator for PPH and works in the public policy area as a grassroots leader. I really admire Emily for the energy that she brings every single day whether she is in the office or out in the field. Very rarely does Emily stay in her office! Currently she is based in the PPH Tucson Administration Office but she is in charge of representing public policy outreach for PPH throughout the entire state of Arizona. Emily is a very busy woman, especially with the upcoming state elections this September and November.

Tuesday of this week, Emily came into the downtown Phoenix office where I followed her around all day. She has her own office and this is where she begins her day after she has checked in with the front receptionist for any mail/messages that their may be. Emily corresponds mainly via email from her blackberry phone but she also has her own computer that travels with her everywhere. Her calendar on her computer is one of the most important applications that she uses and she is constantly adding and viewing the date(s) for various appointments and events. At 1 PM Emily and I went to a small monthly meeting with the other two main coordinators of PPH who represent Communications, Marketing and Public Policy. They all chatted for a couple of hours about what their main objective is presently; getting endorsed candidates elected. Also, the sticky side of endorsing candidates was touched on regarding how some candidates are considered 'private endorsements' and therefore do not want that information publicly known. This can be due to social aspects within a specific voting division. For example, if the community is highly Latino and of the Catholic faith, socially the majority of these citizens probably do not support PPH or more importantly a candidate who does [publicly] ;)

After the meeting we went back to Emily's office and both went to work looking in newspapers or online for different events coming up around the valley (i.e. concerts, art walks, festivals etc.) that could be potential sites to hold PPH information booths. We were able to come up with several ideas to hold PPH events here in the Phoenix area and the next activity will be this Thursday at "Thursday's on Mill". The city of Tempe hosts local music on the entire street of Mill and this is a perfect place for PPH to do what we call 'crowd canvass'. This is where 3 of us go out into the community and try and get signatures of Pro-choice people either for a petition of some kind pertaining to the upcoming elections or just to help people become aware of the laws here in AZ that are affecting reproductive rights.

At the end of the night we held a new volunteer orientation that Emily had put together an entire presentation for that introduced the newcomers to PPH's history and our mission plus other safety features. We then discussed the new event ideas that we had come up with earlier that day and asked for input from the other volunteers. After the orientation meeting I helped Emily clean up the snacks and drinks that we had set out, then we turned off the lights before we each went our separate ways for the night!