In a drab hotel ballroom on a gray Friday evening, hundreds of people excitedly snap their fingers and nod in agreement. Activist Brittany Packnett stands on a small stage in front of a pink banner, addressing the crowd with conviction: “We are not a phase. And our work is not a fad…They tried to stop us, but they forgot we move mountains.”

And the organization’s work isn’t getting lighter: Title X—a federally funded low-income family planning program—is rumored to be on the chopping block, and a Supreme Court battle over whether or not crisis pregnancy centers can lie about abortion under the protection of the First Amendment looms in the future.

Over the last year, Planned Parenthood launched numerous massive phone-banking campaigns against Republican-led attacks on reproductive rights and healthcare access, including the multiple attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the birth control mandate rollback, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement's attempts to prevent undocumented minors from receiving abortions.

Once mostly known as a resource for affordable reproductive health services like abortion and birth control, Planned Parenthood has more recently grown into a totem of women’s resistance to the Trump administration. After Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016, the organization received a record-breaking 250,000 new volunteers, according to its press office.

We’re at the #IStandWithPlannedParenthood Organizing Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina, an invite-only gathering that’s Planned Parenthood’s latest move in a shift toward becoming a more volunteer-focused and -led organization. The goal is to gather roughly 1,000 of the organization’s most promising volunteers and encourage them to amplify their advocacy efforts by giving them the tools to create “intersectional grassroots organizing campaigns” in their own communities.

Of the dozens of people I talk to over the course of the weekend, Trump’s 2016 victory is, indeed, a common motivator—along with having personally benefited from Planned Parenthood’s services. One woman tells me, “I thought Barack had things handled. And then.” She grimaces. Jessi Coble of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, which runs three health centers, says that while they normally get five to 10 calls per week asking about volunteer opportunities, more than 300 people signed up in the two weeks after the election.

The Charlotte event is the last in a series of four summits held since September, and takes place just days after former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards announced she was stepping down. A group of 300 volunteers have traveled to the southern banking city, all expenses paid. The oldest participant is 74; the youngest 15 (excluding the six-year-old accompanying his mom). Eighty-six percent are women, nine percent are men, and four percent are non-binary or genderqueer (one percent chose not to answer). At least one has plans to run for local office.

Early Saturday morning, the ballroom is a sea of identical, pink Planned Parenthood T-shirts. So far, the summit feels akin to a summer camp or a weekend retreat. Conversations about power, truth, and being a “warrior for change” employ rhetoric bizarrely akin to that used at some Christian boot camps such as Camp Joshua—an anti-abortion camp that promises to make prayer warriors of its young attendees—although the content is obviously at odds.

Long conversations about reproductive justice are punctuated by participants idly making flowers and jewelry out of pipe cleaners. Light-hearted group songs follow intense strategy sessions. I often find myself standing off to the side while hundreds of people dance or stretch together at the behest of the weekend’s “fun coordinator.” The summit, I will learn, is designed for attendees to confront some of the ugliest realities of our country without being overwhelmed.