PP Staff Focus on Advocacy

At our annual All Staff meeting, nearly 120 Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan staff gathered for a day of camaraderie and departmental updates. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan, the advocacy arm, took this opportunity to do a few things.

First, we explained what was going on with the Stimulus Package that was making its way through Congress, and we handed out background info, as well as everyone’s members of Congress’ phone numbers (and the number to the White House) and told them to get out their cell phones. In just 10 minutes, we got about 100 calls in to our Senators, Congress People, and the President, letting them know that we wanted to see the Medicaid Waiver stay in the package. We had billing folks, IT people, nurses, organizers, medical assistants, VPs, and our CEO calling all at once…it was a beautiful sight!



Next we divided all the staff up into groups, gave each group a prop box, some talking points, and about 15 minutes to come up with persuasive commercials around our Prevention Agenda, which includes, access and info about emergency congtraception, comprehensive medically-accurate, age-appropriate sexuality education, family planning funding, and contraceptive equity. They were fabulously creative and hilarious! I encourage everyone to give a group of Planned Parenthood staff an atlas, an umbrella, a condom hat, and a harmonica just to see what happens!

Finally, we gathered up the enormous amount of donations we’d received from staff throughout January when we held our Women’s Essentials Drive in honor of Dr. King. We wanted to get a look at it all in one place and take the opportunity to snap a picture of our success. Staff from Detroit, Lansing, East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Brighton, and Ypsilanti posed with pride. Since then, the donations have been distributed to local women’s shelters near each health center.