Fighting Forward with Faith Leaders:

How Planned Parenthood is Engaging the Louisiana Religious Community

Over the past year, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Louisiana team has worked closely with local faith leaders on civic engagement efforts. Through two separate campaigns, our team engaged with over 20 faith leaders throughout our communities in Louisiana.

First, the Why Courts Matter campaign served as a primer on the federal court system and highlighted the harmful, lasting impacts of lifetime judicial appointments by the Trump Administration. Throughout this campaign, we hosted six virtual information sessions and a large virtual town hall which all local faith leaders were invited to attend. These events laid the groundwork for meaningful partnership opportunities in the future.

Our next campaign, Fighting Forward with Faith Leaders, focused on the November 2020 election and demonstrated the value of the relationships we were forging. The partnerships with faith leaders in our communities helped us host virtual and in-person voter registration drives, voter education sessions, census education efforts, and “Church to the Polls,” where we helped voters actually get to the ballot box.. Together, we registered 145 new voters and sent information to 4,000 supporters. These partnerships have already proven to be invaluable.

Our Youth Faith Leaders program is an opportunity for young leaders from the faith community to take on peer educator and advocate roles in the realm of sexual and reproductive health. Ten youth —ages 14 to 21 — from the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas have been selected to participate in our program because of their commitment to the cause. In our program, they will learn key skills for delivering medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education to their peers, learn how to support their peers as resourceful leaders, and strengthen their voices as advocates. These leaders will act as health ambassadors to their families, friends, and communities.

With appreciation, we would like to highlight our partners:

Christian Unity Baptist Church
The City of Love Full Gospel Church
Greater King Solomon Baptist Church
Historic St. James AME
Little Zion Baptist Church
St. Andrew Baptist Church
St. Peter Claver Catholic Church
The Sixth Baptist Church
Temple Sinai
Union Bethel AME

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is proud of the work that these teams have collaborated on. We are looking forward to the accomplishments of the future and know that we are truly stronger together. 

Pictured above: Faith Leaders in the community work to register new voters before the November 2020 election.