Project Narrative Paper: Stepping Stone Child Advocacy and Sexual Assault Center

Megan Aivalotis

Department of Health and Human Performance, Georgia College & State University

KINS 4306: Internship in Public Health

Dr. Ernie Kaninjing

April 20, 2023

This past semester I had the opportunity to work as a student intern at Stepping Stone.

Stepping Stone is a children’s advocacy and sexual assault center with offices in Dublin and
Eastman. There are numerous services offered at Stepping Stone such as counseling, forensic

interviews, forensic medical exams, support groups, and more. I also had the privilege of

working alongside and learning from the fantastic staff. Before beginning my internship, I

wanted my project to be education based. Health and sex education is lacking in numerous

schools in our country, which can directly impact one's choices and outlook. This is a public

health issue that I have always felt passionately about. I wanted to take this opportunity to try

and provide helpful information that is accessible. After sharing my ideas with our site

supervisor, Emily Brookshire, we landed on the idea of creating a frequently asked questions

(FAQ) page for the Stepping Stone website. This included a total of 18 infographics that cover 3

of the most common topics people have questions about. Choosing to publish this information on

the website allows us to reach a new audience, rather than just those that walk through our doors.

This also allows those that do not feel comfortable asking these questions in-person access to the

information.

The topics I discussed for my project include STIs/STDs, internet safety, and health

versus unhealthy relationships. These topics are both prevalent and relevant. I created a total of 7

infographics regardings STIs, 5 regarding internet safety, and 6 regarding relationships. The

infographics for STIs include STIs versus STDs, what STIs are, STI prevention, how one gets an

STI, common STIs and their symptoms, STI treatment, and STI testing. The infographics for

internet safety include how the internet is unsafe, online platforms one should be aware of, how

one can be safer online, how to discuss internet safety with your child, and the age of consent in

the state of Georgia. Finally, the infographics for relationships include healthy versus unhealthy

signs of a relationship, 10 signs of an unhealthy relationship, 10 signs of a healthy relationship,

grooming, stalking, and romanticization. The most difficult aspect of creating all of these
infographics was utilizing language that was appropriate for all education levels. As I am used to

writing at a college level, I struggled with this at first. I quickly caught on and was able to

translate detailed information into something digestible. However, I did use more complicated

terms at times and explained their meaning. I wanted to aid in our readers developing a more

comprehensive vocabulary that will allow them to better navigate this information in the future.

I built a new page on the Stepping Stone website that included an introduction to the

page, all 18 infographics, and links to more resources. It took me a few days to construct the

FAQ page in a way that was easy to navigate and uniform with the rest of the website. I also

made an effort to create all of my infographics The page went live on April 13th. Within the first

48 hours of my page being posted, it was visited a total of 7 times. This placed my page as the

14th most viewed page on the Stepping Stone website out of 20. However, after just one week

my page grew exponentially and is now the 7th most viewed page. I am incredibly proud of these

analytics. The only changes I would make to my implementation are publishing the page sooner

and announcing the addition on social media. I had originally planned to publish my site a week

before I did, however, it is difficult to plan what our work days will look like. I believe that if I

had published sooner and announced it on social media the analytics would have been

significantly better.

Overall, I am very pleased with the work that I produced. Although it was a long process,

and frustrating at times, I learned a lot through my project. I am hopeful that others will continue

to build on what I have created and tackle other important topics such as mental health, local

resources for housing, and food insecurity. I am also hopeful that these infographics will increase

the self-efficacy of those who view them, as well as raise awareness.