When I came to Agnes Scott as a first year, I knew I wanted to start a Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA) chapter, Planned Parenthood’s college-level advocacy group focused around reproductive rights. I had volunteered and organized extensively with the Planned Parenthood in my hometown, I wanted to stay involved in reproductive rights activism, and at the time, Agnes had no organization devoted to reproductive rights or feminist organizing. I reached out to other interested students and coordinated the founding paperwork for starting a student organization within my first two months of college. Working with the other executive board members, I served as President of PPGA until the end of my junior year, transitioning the organization to new leadership during my senior year.

As a PPGA chapter, we were heavily involved in campus organizing and advocacy, as well as education. We put on 3-4 Pillow Talks, or informal sex education workshops, each semester, with original curriculum on topics such as  “Cupcakes and Consent” or “Queer Sex and Queso.” Sample flyers from these workshops can be seen in the gallery below. We have knocked on every dorm room on campus in Get Out the Vote efforts on election day, and lobbied at the Georgia State Capital. For our efforts, we were awarded the Center for Student Involvement’s Wellness SWEEPer for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years. Culminating my leadership with PPGA was a two-day event we spearheaded in collaboration with several other departments and organizations, called Transforming our Space. We brought speaker Trystan Reese to campus to speak about transgender justice on campus and queer parenthood. Targeting departments on campus that had been sources of trans exclusion, we coordinated workshops for students and faculty/staff, as well as a public keynote attended by over 100 people. 

My time with PPGA has deepened my understanding of issues within reproductive rights activism, and allowed me to sharpen my leadership, team building, and organizing skills. Organizing with Planned Parenthood ultimately helped me understand that my core skills and interests center around education and healthcare, rather than advocacy, but I am proud of the change that we effected on Agnes Scott’s campus.