Abby Long ’25, a psychology major at the College of William and Mary, spent her summer interning with the Latisha’s House Foundation in Williamsburg through the College’s City Research Scholars Internship program.
This program, supported by the Roy R. Charles Center, grants accepted students $5,000 to complete a ten-week community-based internship or research activity in Williamsburg. Long’s internship aligned with her interest in women’s health, psychology and community-based work.
As written on their website, Latisha’s House “provides a long-term, transitional housing program for adult, female survivors of sex trafficking and offers individualized support to empower them to build a bridge from their traumatic past to a positive future.”
“They are the intermediate phase in trauma healing,” Long said. “A lot of what they do is restorative care in the meantime.”
The women at Latisha’s House typically spend between 10 months and two years in the program.
Primarily, as an intern, Long facilitated the various programs offered by the program, while also encouraging positive relationship building among the women. Prior to her graduation this semester, Long wanted to gain experience working for a non-profit.
Long hoped to narrow down her future career plans by working with Latisha’s House, hoping to decide between community-based and recovery-based work.
“The larger scope of the internship with the Charles Center was to understand your career pursuits and your passions. Particularly with my internship and with some of the other ones in the community, it was to understand where you were situated and why the organization is in Williamsburg,” Long said.
Long is also interested in the policy side of sex trafficking prevention and how it is often polarized between the right versus the left.
“In the middle are these women, and what their reality is like is very different from either of those arguments, and so just as a concept it is a very interesting piece of policy because it deals with women, sex, legalization and just everything in general with the very sticky issue of prostitution,” Long said.
Latisha’s House provides mental health services for the women who stay there, as well as group activities such as art therapy, GED tutors and cooking classes.
“Just all of these things that help bolster either skills that they weren’t previously able to obtain or to help kind of heal them from traumas. That’s all offered there,” Long said.
Apart from her internship, Long also works as a Wellness Ambassador on campus. She promotes the Wellness Center’s preventative resources and initiatives through social media and other marketing channels on campus.
As an advocate for wellness, Long works as the first point of contact for students who are looking for resources.
“Day-to-day in the Wellness Center, it’s a lot of maintaining the facility and trying to create new initiatives on campus. So it’s familiarizing yourself with available resources, voicing those to students, making sure students are aware of them, but then also receiving feedback and learning where the gaps are or what people are unhappy with or don’t have access to,” Long said.
Long would like to see more life skills rooted in wellness offered on campus, similar to those offered to the women at Latisha’s House.
“I think providing things for the student population that are more usable on a daily basis would be better, or more students would interact with [the Wellness Center,]” Long said.
Long has also worked closely with Lips, the queer art collective on campus.
“With all of these orgs, all the things I do, I always try to center women’s voices and queer voices because those are the things that I can speak to and have the most connections with in the William and Mary community,” Long said. “I always am trying to make sure that students who have felt previously excluded or who maybe struggle to feel sometimes even just accepting of themselves, I want to make sure that there’s more fun and there’s more of a space where not only [they] can be [themselves], but fully thrive and enjoy being [themselves].”
Both Long’s experiences with Latisha’s House this summer and her on-campus involvements reflect her dedication to advocacy and community empowerment.
“The work that I like to do is very community based and finding different people who maybe you can’t see all the time but who are there,” Long said. “It’s just about linking people together and making people see each other more as community members and people who will be there for one another, can be there for one another.”
CORRECTION (09/17/2024): Article was updated to correct Long’s graduation year.
