Today was a big day in terms of meeting important women for me. I met Nancy Rafi and Gina Raimondo within the last four hours.

Nancy came into the Center today to speak with the interns as a personal favor to Megan about the important work she does in trying to end violence against women. Nancy is not only close friends with Megan (she helped fight the city of Pawtucket when they almost didn't let the Center open), she is also close friends with Eve Ensler, the creator of The Vagina Monologues. Nancy has also started her own nonprofit, the Rhode Island Crisis Assistance Center. It does amazing, immediate work for women to help deal with details in crisis situations, like providing clothing to women after going to the hospital for a rape kit, because the hospital will take clothing away as evidence and leave women to go back home in a hospital gown. Its next fundraiser will be in September, and it is an awesome concept. Called "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes," it is a walk in which men raise money to help prevent and raise awareness of domestic violence by walking a mile in bright red high heels. I fully intend to get the guys in my fraternity, including my boyfriend, involved. The interns at the Center will also have a team, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

After being thoroughly impressed with Nancy and the wonderful efforts she's made to help direct attention to relationship abuse, I attended Gina Raimondo's first "Money School" lecture in Cranston. Gina is running for Treasurer of Rhode Island, but is taking the position to the people by offering financial resources and lessons to Rhode Islanders for free. She covered basic information about savings, credit, and debt that, judging from the reactions of the people around me, were really helpful. I picked up a few tips, also, which is great, but mostly I learned about different resources for college funding that I hadn't known about. There are a lot of small organizations within the government that loan and help very specific circumstances, but are never used or known about and therefore aren't helping people. Rhode Island's unemployment rate is still ridiculously high and the cost of living is constantly increasing. Gina is trying to bring the Treasurer's office to the forefront of helping people directly, which is what the state desperately needs. She will hold banks accountable for taking advantage of their customers by holding control over the state's available bank fund, negotiating distributions of money among banks by requiring service to RI in return. I think her plans are great, and I sure as hell hope she wins the election.

This past week has also been full of candidate interviews and deciding endorsements for the upcoming primary. I think that I will talk more about that after the RI NOW PAC has come to a decision about all of its endorsements, but they are pretty exciting. We received over 30 returned questionnaires and have been choosing our candidates quite carefully. Once we announce our decisions, I will talk about meetings that I have had with specific candidates, and how lucky I am to have the opportunity to speak directly with the people who will be shaping the future of RI's policies. Also, the other women in NOW are amazing, and I'm super lucky to get to work with them so closely.

That's all for now. Take care.