For 10 weeks during the summer of 2004, I worked with Centro Las Libres de Información en Salud Sexual in Guanajuato, México. Centro Las Libres is a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to promoting and defending women's sexual and reproductive rights through advocacy efforts, youth health promoter trainings, and ongoing educational activities for providers in the medical, legal, and public health sectors. Centro Las Libres is a member of Milenio Feminista, a national network of over 80 NGOs working at the grassroots level to advance the sexual and reproductive rights of women.

During my internship I worked on Centro Las Libres' Legal Abortion Project. In the year 2000, the Guanajuato state Legislature passed a bill that made it a crime for rape survivors to terminate a pregnancy resulting from the assault. Centro Las Libres and other women's groups organized a statewide protest against the bill; the governor ultimately vetoed the bill. Despite this victory, the state continues to provide inadequate medical and legal services to rape survivors. Government institutions lack official procedures for assuring timely and quality services to survivors of rape seeking a legal abortion. Consequently, the rights of girls and women are consistently violated. When Guanajuato's governor vetoed the bill, national polls indicated that the majority of Mexican citizens were in support of the initiative.

In collaboration with Ipas, Centro Las Libres was in the process of conducting interviews with public and private institutions in several states to learn about what services were available to survivors of sexual violence. This project was part of a larger effort to monitor and analyze the procedures by which government and private agencies specializing in sexual crimes handle rape cases. I was responsible for interviewing social workers, psychologists, doctors and persons in charge of setting policy within private and public hospitals and other government entities. The interview contained questions about the services each of the institutions offered, the protocols set in place to deal with rape survivors, the person's role within the institution as well as the person's views about Emergency Contraception (EC) and abortion. Once completed, information from States across Mexico would be compiled in order to identify key issues on which NGOs should focus their attention.

Between July and December 2005, I worked as an intern for the Population Council's Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (PCLAC). The Population Council ("The Council") is a U.S.-based research organization that has project offices throughout the world and one main office in each region that serves as regional headquarters. Research is based in reproductive health issues, and programs vary widely from biomedical research and product development to community-based program design and implementation.

I worked for PCLAC's Reproductive Health Program, which conducts applied research on contraception, abortion, maternal and child health and sexually transmitted disease prevention. PCLAC has projects in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru and along the U.S.-Mexico border. My principal preceptor was Reproductive Health Program Director Dr. Sandra Garcia, but I also assisted in various projects headed by other PCLAC staff.

PCLAC’s work is primarily focused on meeting the reproductive health goals established at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Conference goals included promoting development by increasing access to reproductive health services and information world wide. PCLAC needs assessments have shown that while many Latin American and Caribbean countries have made great strides to improve reproductive hhealth outcomes over the last 20 years, there remains a great deal of work to be done to reach the ICPD goals.

During the months of July and August of 2002 I was part of a research team carrying out a study at Mexfam clinics in the Republic of Mexico. Mexfam is the Mexican Family Planning Association, a non-profit organization, governed by volunteers. Elizabeth Butrick, a Michigan International Development Associate, was the study supervisor. Nicole Monastersky and I, both of us graduate students in the department of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at UCLA, were the two other members of the evaluation team. The goal of the study was to understand the role of family planning services in Mexfam's clinics.

Mexfam's clinics provide both specialized and family medicine services. The clinics are responsible for supplying a sustainability base for a variety of social programs. These programs are central to Mexfam's mission of providing services to the most vulnerable Mexican population sectors. Family Planning is one of these programs.

Because the provision of family planning services is an important part of Mexfam's mission, it is essential for the organization to understand to what extent clinics are promoting and providing these services.

My internship with Mexfam, Mexico's Foundation for Family Planning (part of the IPPF) was focused most specifically as an evaluation of the family planning services provided by the Mexfam clinics. Together with my supervisor and another student volunteer, we visited 11 of the clinics in various parts of the country. I spent the majority of my time working in the small, agricultural community (population 50,000) of San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato. There, I conducted the evaluation (surveyed and interviewed female clinic users of family planning use and interviewed doctors regarding provision of family planning methods) in order to evaluate the differences between users of family planning methods from Mexfam and users of family planning methods obtained at other locations (e.g. other hospitals, pharmacies). In addition to San Luis de la Paz, I also went to San Luis Potosi, Xola, and Guadalajara to conduct the family planning evaluation in their respective Mexfam clinics.

While the bulk of my time in San Luis de la Paz was spent on the family planning evaluation, I was also involved with two other projects in this particular clinic. The first involved recruiting community promotoras from the local municipalities to participate in a new series of community talks/ lectures on a health topic of their collective choosing. The second involved designing a funding proposal for a Òletter projectÓ whereby migrant workers from San Luis de la Paz living in the US would be contacted and informed about the risks of STDs and HIV/AIDS, as well as family planning and contraceptive methods available.

My summer internship experience was greatly enhanced by my living environment. I had the good fortune of staying with family members of my bosses in San Luis de la Paz. As an American graduate student (and the only guera around), I was initially quite the anomaly, in the home as well as in the community. Once the cultural differences faded and became interesting topics of conversation, I was quickly welcomed into their family as the newest member. I joined the kids and the adults in nightly card games. I came home from work daily to have the main comida together with the rest of the family. With more than 25 cousins and at least that many aunts and uncles, I was rarely without playmates. Though it may not be as soon as Christmas vacation (as was the request of the littlest children) I am looking forward to the next chance I may have to go back to visit my adopted Mexican family.