Wrapping Up the Summer at VAYLA

As the summer comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on my internship at VAYLA. Entering the summer, I was under the impression that I would be facilitating a Reproductive Justice program for youth: teaching comprehensive sex education, discussing current reproductive health policy, and addressing cultural stigmas surrounding sex. Because of coronavirus, we faced several obstacles in running the program over the summer and unfortunately had to postpone it. Instead, the other RRRH intern at VAYLA and I turned our focus to educating youth through social media infographics. While I learned a lot about graphic design and condensing information into short and digestible fragments, my most important takeaways resulted from research I did to create the infographics. I read about everything from the biological mechanisms of pregnancy to the history of forced sterilization in the United States.

Additionally, interning at VAYLA provided me with a new AAPI Reproductive Justice framework. I have never interned at a specifically AAPI nonprofit, and as the daughter of two Indian immigrants, it has been interesting to incorporate AAPI immigrant perspectives and cultural stigmas into my work. When doing RJ work, I think it’s important to emphasize that every individual has different intersectional experiences, and I really appreciated VAYLA’s acknowledgment and incorporation of that.

Moving forward, I will still be interning at VAYLA, although it will not be through the RRRH program. I’m looking forward to seeing where the VAYLA Reproductive Justice youth program goes in the future, and I’m excited to meet whoever the new RRRH intern at VAYLA is!