Helen Bellew '25

My name is Helen Bellew, and I am a rising senior majoring in Political Science. This summer I had the privilege of interning with the communications team at Landesa. Landesa is a Seattle-based global nonprofit that advances land rights for people in rural areas. My main projects were writing articles for Plotlines Landesa’s newsletter, and developing a new newsletter for Stand for Her Land, a coalition of women’s land rights organizations led by Landesa. 

Land rights are a complex issue that touch every part of global development, including food security, education, women’s rights, climate change, and peace and security. Landesa works with governments to develop policies that establish equal land rights for women and create mechanisms to resolve land disputes. They also work on implementation to raise awareness about land rights laws and ensure that people in rural areas are able to take full advantage of their land rights. 

One of the key challenges that the communications team faces is simplifying Landesa’s complex work into content that is accessible and engaging to a wide audience. As an intern, I took technical case studies, reports, and policy proposals and turned them into pieces that can engage a wide audience. For example, one of the pieces I wrote for the Stand for Her Land newsletter was about a case study on land degradation neutrality in Ethiopia, highlighting the connection between sustainable land management and women’s land rights. I also created several social media posts that simplified Landesa’s work in an approachable way. 

One of my biggest takeaways from this summer has been learning to adopt the voice of an organization in my writing. It was important that my writing fit with the tone and style of Landesa’s work, so it was a fun and interesting challenge to learn and then adopt that style. It was also an opportunity to expand my lens beyond American politics, which is my usual focus, to global development and learn how a global nonprofit is run. Everyone at Landesa was incredibly generous with their time and open to talking to me about their work and career path.

I am so grateful to the Smart Family Internship Grant for making this internship possible. It was a privilege to work with and learn from the amazing communications team at Landesa, and I look forward to applying the communications and writing skills that I gained in my academics and beyond