Spring 2021 - Child Policy Externships

Photograph of five individuals standing arm in arm, wearing face masks and looking at the camera
Extern Zoe Nguyen (2nd from left) with colleagues from the Louisiana Center for Children's Rights

Samantha Kelts - First Year Cleveland

First Year Cleveland (FYC) is a community collaborative effort with a mission of reducing infant deaths and racial disparities in infant deaths in Cuyahoga County. By bringing together and mobilizing parents and families, community leaders, health care providers, philanthropic organizations, educational institutions, and government, business, and nonprofit entities, FYC hopes to achieve their vision of seeing every baby born in Cuyahoga County celebrate a first birthday.

As an extern this spring with FYC, Sam Kelts was able to learn the inner workings of a policy organization and gain invaluable experience she could not have acquired in a classroom. Working closely with FYC Executive Director Bernadette Kerrigan, Sam led an effort for the Racism as a Public Health Crisis Cleveland Coalition to advocate for Senate Concurrent Resolution 4 (Ohio Declaring Racism as a Public Health Crisis) through letters of support from across the state. She also completed research into New Jersey’s aggressive new state policies to improve maternal and infant health and completed a white paper on an innovative “Housing as a Prescription” model piloted in Boston, MA -- completing policy recommendations for FYC on each research topic. Sam hopes to translate numerous lessons from this experience into her career as a nurse and community organizer.


Naveena Bontha - Office of the Ohio Public Defender

The Office of the Ohio Public Defender (OPD) was created in 1976, and is a state agency tasked with providing legal representation and other services to people accused or convicted of committing a crime who cannot afford to hire a committee. The Policy and Outreach division is one of the OPD’s four primary divisions, and serves as the main point of contact for county indigent defense systems and processing county reimbursement, provides policy expertise to create equitable legislation, and is responsible for the agency’s media, social media, and outreach efforts. 

Through her internship with the OPD, Naveena Bontha was able to gain invaluable insight into the juvenile justice system, as well as an understanding of the decision-making processes of a policy-making organization. Under the guidance of the OPD’s Director of Policy and Outreach Laura Austen, Naveena observed working group meetings and met with staff members to discuss their various roles and responsibilities within the agency. In addition to these activities, Naveena conducted a thematic analysis of news articles and corresponding social media comments left on articles to gain an understanding of how children who commit crimes are portrayed by the media, and how the public perceives these children after consuming the media. This research served as her capstone project, Thematic Analysis to Identify Negative Tropes and Biases Weaponized Against Children in News Coverage and Social Media Discourse of Juvenile Crime.

Naveena’s experience at the OPD has had an immense impact on her future goals, as she hopes to pursue a career addressing the specific healthcare needs of those within the adult prison and juvenile justice systems.


Zoe Nguyen - Louisiana Center for Children's Rights

Zoe Nguyen completed her externship at the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights (LCCR), a non-profit with the mission of using direct representation and policy advocacy to keep children out of the justice system so that they can stay in their homes and communities. LCCR offers public defense specifically for youth and represents over 90% of the youth involved in the justice system from New Orleans, LA. For years, LCCR has been advocating to pull back the restrictions on Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) sentences, with the goal this past Spring to abolish JLWOP sentences in Louisiana. 

Under the supervision of the LCCR Policy Team and Rachel Gassert, Zoe was able to observe Louisiana legislature committee hearings at the Capitol building in Baton Rouge, experience the complex nature of policy advocacy, and learn about various problems surrounding JLWOP for children, families, and the community. Some tasks as an extern included bill tracking over 600 proposed bills in the Louisiana Legislature, watching about 18 hours worth of legislative hearings from 2016-2020, tracking current court cases, and providing summary documents of meetings, seminars, and documents.  Zoe also completed a capstone project, The Role of Arts Advocacy in Humanizing the Dehumanized.

Externing at LCCR has helped Zoe understand that becoming a public defense attorney is not the only route she can pursue after college and solidified her desire to advocate for the rights of children in any field she chooses to go into. She will be able to use the connections made during this externship to further explore her options after college and is looking forward to what the future may offer. 



 Click here for more information about the Mann Child Policy Externship program.