Name: Angel Suero

Class Year: 2016

Internship Placement: This summer I am working at Women’s Way, as the policy and advocacy intern, assisting the policy and advocacy work that Women’s Way does.

What’s happening? We’d love to hear how your internship is going!

This summer I have had the amazing opportunity to be the advocacy and policy intern at Women’s Way, a nonprofit that serves as something like a matriarch for other nonprofits in the city of Philadelphia. They fund and collaborate with many nonprofits, and are heavily involved with advocacy and policy initiatives that align with their four pillars which are: economic justice, safety, women and girl’s leadership, and access to healthcare and reproductive rights.

Interning at Women’s Way gave me the opportunity to engage in a way that most people cannot with politics in Pennsylvania. Although as a high school student I involved myself in many political efforts at the state level, I had forgotten how exciting and exhausting it can be to work in the policy world.

Working at Women’s Way also allowed me to gain a deeper appreciation for how complex politics really can be, given the number and different motivations of all the actors involved in informing policy: nonprofits, alliances, the private sector, different populations, and constituents all attempt to shape the way in which elected officials act. In addition, there is so much legislation that is constantly changing and being voted on that at times it can be really difficult to take track of it all. Being a politically-informed and active citizen is therefore a challenging task for those who are not able to, because of different constraints, take the time to process all that information. This is why I am grateful for organizations like Women’s Way whose policy efforts are informed by what they hear from collaborate with members of, and those who service, disenfranchised populations.