Public Health Week, Empowerment Week, Take Back the Night, FD of the Year, VRJ Update, White House Forum, Lilith Fund

Public Health Week

me, Liz

Voices for Reproductive Justice helped table on Monday for Public Health Week. Several organizations tabled at this event. Students were to receive information from five tables of their choice and have representatives from those tables sign off. Then they got to make their own free t-shirt. Liz tabled for most of this, but it was a lot of fun for the short time I was able to help!

Don't worry if you didn't get to see this sweet birth control poster in person; VRJ will be toting it around whenever we table.

Social Work Council's 2nd Annual Empowerment Week


Social Work Council's 2nd Annual Empowerment Week was a huge success! We scheduled Gregory Plaza for four hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, but we handed out all of our goodies in just two hours each day.

Ana, Meredith, me, Angelica, Haley, and Krista on Day 1

Special thanks to Denise for painting our a-frame! I am bummed I didn't get a picture of Denise and Augie tabling on Day 2, but THANK YOU!

And another special thanks to ResistAttack for donating pepper spray, C.A.R.E program for donating female condoms and dental dams, Planned Parenthood/Voices for Reproductive Justice for donating male condoms, UT's Alcohol and Drug Peer Educators for handing out t-shirts and literature on knowing your limit, and UT's Senate of College Councils for funding our t-shirts. 

I can't wait to put this event on next year. Thank you Social Work Council for donating your time and for all of your hard work.

Take Back the Night


I attended my first Take Back the Night on Tuesday. What a powerful experience. Voices Against Violence did a great job coordinating this event. I don't think I would do the event any justice by recapping it in a blog. All I can do is highly encourage you to attend next year.

Angelica, Ruth, Krista, me, and Haley

UT's Senate Financial Director of the Year


Well, the second Senate General Assembly I miss all year, and I am awarded Financial Director of the Year! I really did not think there was a shot in hell I would be nominated by my fellow FD's for this honorable award. When I knew I couldn't attend, I sent Bhargav (the Senate FD) an e-mail asking him to congratulate the winner. The next morning I received this e-mail:

SO STOKED. I went to pick up my award on Friday. 

me, Bhargav

Thank you Bhargav and Carisa for not only giving me a certificate, but a special inspirational photo that I can keep forever. 

Voices for Reproductive Justice


Voices for Reproductive Justice will be tabling on Gregory Plaza this Tuesday, April 10th. Please drop by  for free condom goodie bags, to register to vote, and/or to sign up for our org!

VRJ is also in the works of setting up a pub crawl for the end of April. We will be promoting free STI testing taking place at Planned Parenthood clinics on April 30th.


White House Forum


I received another exciting piece of news this week: I was accepted to the White House Young American Series hosted at UT this Tuesday, April 10th! If you didn't apply but are interested, the event will be live streaming. I don't believe the link has been released yet, but I will post it here as soon as I find out.

Lilith Fund Bowl-a-Thon Fundraiser


If you've been following my blog, you know my original goal for this fundraiser was $100. But with your help, I've raised $486!!! Please help me hit the $500 mark- I only need $14 more! DONATE HERE.

Here's a little more about Lilith - the fund has been around for 10 years.  Its first challenge was to raise $10,000 to begin assisting low-income folks with abortion funding.  Last year, Lilith gave away $80,000 to over 1,000 patients - so the average grant is around $75.  Once clients have an appointment with a clinic and know how much money they need, they call the hotline.  A volunteer responds to their call, provides financial counseling, and ultimately determines the amount of money they can grant to the client.  They work with clinics across Texas from El Paso to Beaumont, as far north as Killeen and south into the RGV.  The TEA Fund is Lilith's "sister" fund for North Texas. 


Other Links

"Like" UT Social Work Council

"Like" UT Voices for Reproductive Justice

RSVP to the War on Women Rally April 28th at the Capitol.

Check out the We Are Women March website.

Follow me on Twitter

Empowerment Week, Student Day at the Legislature, Volunteering with Planned Parenthood, UT Spring Break Kits, Project 2012, and Friends from Dallas

Empowerment Week/Meeting with James from Resist Attack

This year, Social Work Council will be hosting Empowerment Week: Safety. The three tenets are: Personal Safety, Sexual Safety, and Alcohol Safety.

This week I officially reserved Gregory Plaza for April 3rd and 4th from 10am-2pm. Come join us for lots of free goodies!

For Personal Safety, we are teaming up with Resist Attack to hand out free pepper spray. I met with the owner, James Shaw, on Friday to collaborate on how to hand out as many free pepper sprays as possible. He agreed to table with us, so you will have the opportunity to speak with him and learn more about Resist Attack's mission.

Here is the free pepper spray James gave me, and what we will be giving away in April!

For Sexual Safety, Voices for Reproductive Justice ("Like" our Facebook page!) will be handing out free condom goodie bags. More information to come!

For Alcohol Safety, I am still waiting to hear back from HealthyHorns, but I am hoping they will table with us. More information to come on this one, too!

Student Day at the Legislature

On Wednesday, I met with the planning committee to discuss Social Work's Student Day at the Legislature on March 6. Attending students are meeting this Friday, March 2, at 3pm in the School of Social Work's Utopia Theatre to group into caucuses (meetings have already been scheduled with several committees and representatives) to discuss what issues we want to address. To sign up, please e-mail kavita.khandekar@utexas.edu.

Volunteering with Planned Parenthood

Thursday was a pretty exciting day volunteering at Planned Parenthood. I took notes on a national Planned Parenthood conference call, and then I dropped off letters at the state capitol. (No big deal, just walking through the Texas House and Senate floors! [It really isn't a big deal, but it was pretty exciting for me]). Unfortunately, the letters were in regards to Texas defunding health care for 130,000 women.

UT Spring Break Kits

University Health Services will be handing out THREE THOUSAND free Spring Break kits this week on the West Mall. On Friday, a few fellow HSPEs and myself helped package them.

You get this sweet water bottle,

and all of these goodies: 6 resource cards (oops, one is a double in this pic), a bookmark, sunscreen, an energy bar, condoms, and lube!

I think they were about half done on Friday.

Project 2012

Project is UT's largest day of service, so of course Social Work Council was there. We teamed up at River City Youth Foundation.

We had to be there at 7:30am, so Gwen brought us homemade breakfast tacos. She is an awesome cook. Thanks, Gwen!

I didn't have a great vision of what we were doing as we started, so this is kind of a "middle" stage picture. We raked up a trail (this picture is a very SMALL portion of what we actually did).

Here is the finished product (again, a very small portion)!

Augie and Krista

Teamwork!

More teamwork!

Gwen and Melissa worked in the garden.

Hook 'em! We had a great time.

Before You Go:

Did you see Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers "Really?!?" last week on Saturday Night Live talking about birth control? Really with Seth and Amy. "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!"