Statewide, Pennsylvanians face barriers around reproductive healthcare access, education, and period poverty (the inability to afford menstrual products). In response to these challenges, four Penn undergraduate students founded Students Organizing for Access to Reproductive Health (SOAR), an innovative, community-minded internship model. This initiative grew from their work in Penn Reproductive Justice’s Menstrual Health Education Program and was awarded a Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace grant earlier in 2024.
One of SOAR’s core goals is to train the next generation of youth activists. After recruiting five students from Philadelphia high schools for a summer internship, SOAR provided them with leadership training, advocacy skills, peer mentorship, and various learning opportunities from local professionals who work within reproductive rights. The interns then selected specific issues to address through community service projects, empowering them to become reproductive justice leaders and ambassadors at their schools.
“Serving as a support system that jumpstarts community-centered projects, SOAR aspires to dismantle barriers to access, education, and health — one student at a time,” said Claire Jun, a fourth-year student at Penn and Co-Founder of SOAR.
“Teaching our interns to think about [reproductive justice] issues as deeply intersectional allowed our interns to create projects rooted in addressing some of the most dire health and economic inequities in Philadelphia.”