Poonam has been facilitating meetings, workshops, panels, and trainings for over 7 years. Her experiences leading consent workshops for her fellow peer educators in college led her to delve more deeply into health education, curriculum development, and hands-on skill-building for sexual and reproductive health.

Doula trainings

Most recently, Poonam has been a trainer of abortion doulas through her role as co-director of Bay Area Doula Project. She has trained over 200 doulas between 2010 and 2014, in New York, California, Texas, and Oregon. Abortion doula trainings extend the emotional, physical, and informational skills that birth doulas use to support people through pregnancy terminations. Poonam brings encouragement, energy, wisdom, and a sense of humor to her trainings. Through intensive overviews of abortion processes, an exploration of personal values and the reproductive justice framework, and hands-on practice of support skills, she has taught doulas how to create a compassionate environment and how to be a supportive presence for someone having an abortion.

Workshop development and facilitation

Poonam has supported a number of groups in creating and facilitating workshop content. She has supported Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases (WORLD) in creating health and wellness seminars for women living HIV. She has also assisted in the development, facilitation, and evaluation of Backline’s Pregnancy Options Workshops.