I am interning this summer at Power in Place, an organization that celebrates women who have built a strong leadership presence in politics. Its mission is to educate interns about these women by inviting them to share their experiences with young women like myself, encouraging them to consider a future in politics. I chose Power in Place as an organization to intern at because I became interested in addressing gender inequality, and racial inequality and its relationship to politics. As a young black woman, I noticed there weren’t enough of us in political offices and I wanted to expand my overall knowledge and experience with more women and their voices inside the realm of politics.
Power in Place is designed to highlight women in politics and to give them the platform they deserve, which can sometimes be overlooked. In order to address this social injustice issue, I have decided to work in the groups of Marketing and Polikus during my summer internship. In Polikus, my responsibilities include composing haikus inspired by the female political officials we highlight in a given week. In the Marketing group, my responsibility and duties are to create a marketplace page on the Power In Place website, as well as to innovate and advertise pro-women in politics branding items with my team.
My work this summer will further the mission of Power in Place since my haikus and my marketplace design will show multiple women of color and women in politics in the best light. Others will be able to interact with and learn from their stories, as well as to see their future selves in a career that involves politics because they are seeing those like them able to do it too.
Small steps that lead to bigger steps at Power in Place would be learning how to communicate well inside a team, as well as being able to collaborate by adding my insight and originality to the groups I am a part of. These lead to a bigger steps because group tasks can be completed and my teammates and I are then allowed to grow as people inside this organization through each taking small parts of ourselves and adding it to our bigger project.
Progress and change to me looks exactly like this because you get to build the stamina and confidence to be able to share your work, interests, and more of yourself, and to learn from others and their interests, work, and topics related to women in politics that are important and affecting the world at hand. Overall, this to me creates progress because I am learning new things that I may have never experienced before or heard of in relation to politics. After our sessions, I am researching more and wanting to learn more about these new topics, which will allow me to grow and expand my knowledge as a person participating inside Power in Place.