Intern with FMF!

Elisette Weiss (Brandeis '10 & FMF 2009 Summer Intern) recently published a summary of her summer intern experience with the Feminist Majority Foundation in Brandeis University's Women and Gender Studies newsletter (copied below). If you're interested in interning with FMF next summer, visit our intern page.

Here's what Elisette had to say about her experiences last summer...

The Louis D. Brandeis Social Justice World of Work Fellowship enabled me to serve as an intern in the Feminist Majority Foundation’s summer internship program in Washington, D.C. I worked on the Global Health and Rights and Web Design projects.

The Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) was founded in 1987 to promote the political, economic, and social equality of all people. Today, FMF works to achieve its goals through research, grassroots organizing, public policy development, and leadership training. FMF is a powerful feminist activist organization and network that reaches activists and academics around the world.

As a major in Health: Science, Society, and Policy and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies, I was drawn to this organization because of my passion for gender equality and reproductive health, both domestically and abroad. Through this internship, I put into practice the theoretical knowledge I gained from my coursework at Brandeis. I was able to analyze critically the complex interplay between social, political, and economic influences, and the benefits of promoting gender and social equality. Moreover, this summer was an opportunity for me to work alongside, interact with, observe, and learn from respected professionals in the policy field of women’s health.

Through my internship, I was directly involved in the daily operations of the non-profit with the web-design team and regularly contributed to the Choices Campus Blog. Additionally, I represented FMF at global health coalition meetings, attended congressional briefings on Capitol Hill, and researched reproductive health legislation to contribute to organizational materials.

My experience with FMF, and exposure to how Washington functions, was critically valuable in providing a useful framework for my coursework and shaping my future career goals within the field of women’s health policy. I was given opportunities to contribute to the crucial work of feminists today and to gain a glimpse into what it might be like to work in Washington in the future.