Leadership:  Steering Committee Member and Site-Lead for Citizenship Day events in 2008 and 2009

The Opportunity:  In the fall of 2007, I was completing my third year of law school.  My focus area had been immigration law.  The American Imigration Lawyers' Association (AILA) was preparing to hold a Citizenship Day event in April of 2008.  The event was a one-day opportunity for immigrants to have their citizenship application (Form N-400) prepared by trained attorneys for little or no cost.  I saw a natural partnership between our adult basic education program (at the time we were named SHAPE) and AILA to work together on the event.  I received permission from my director to use our building to host one of the event locations.

Many immigration attorneys charged as much as $1,200 for N-400 preparation.  Citizenship Day was a wonderful opportunity for those who were qualified for citizenship but could not afford the cost of representation.

My Role:  I joined the Citizenship Day Steering Committee, and was asked to be the Site Lead for our Bloomington location (one of nine locations around Minnesota).  I partnered with Kathy Klos, a staff attorney from Centro Legal, to organize our site.

This project involved fund raising, volunteer recruitment and training, supply and logistics planning, and a considerable amount of marketing work.  We were staffing what was essentially a mid-size law office for a day.

We recruited attorneys using AILA's mailing list, personal contacts, and flyers at Continuing Legal Education events.  This was a Steering Committee function, and volunteer attorneys and paralegals were assigned to sites based on where they lived and their willingness to travel.  Each Site Lead was responsible for recruiting non-attorney volunteers to staff their site.  I was fortunate to have several Metro South staff members and volunteers donate their time and efforts.

Volunteer training was done via webinar for the non-attorneys.  It was entirely too dry and technical, which is something we fixed for 2009.  I was part of the committee that organized a large Continuing Legal Education event to train attorneys on the N-400 form and citizenship process.  This training took place at Hamline University in both 2008 and 2009.

My marketing role was to speak to all of Metro South's 800 enrolled students.  I visited each classroom, handing out materials, presenting on what citizenship was, why someone would want it, and the process to get it.  Eligibility was a big issue, as many of our students weren't yet eligible.  Our students helped to spread the message to their friends, families, and co-workers.

In 2009, I designed and built a citizenshipday.info website.

Challenges:  In 2008, our Steering Committee was very, very large--close to forty members.  This made for somewhat ineffective meetings.  In 2009, we shrank that to ten members.  AILA had never coordinated such a large event, so it was a growing process for all of us.  

Reaching the people we wanted to help was a challenge, too.  I reached out to many of the metro-area adult basic education programs, with varying degrees of success.  Some were very excited about sharing the opportunity with their students.  We also reached out to religous and social services organizations.  In 2009, the marketing component was easier, based on the work we'd done a year earlier.

The government fee for the N-400 was $680.  This had been increased from $425 in 2007.  This was a significant barrier to many potential citizens.  This, combined with the late-2008 beginning of the recession, significantly impacted our event in 2009.

The Events:  2008's event was a wonderful success.  I worked with Kathy Klos to ensure that our site was set up to provide individual meeting rooms, printers, and waiting areas for families.  We were uncertain as to how many people would attend.  We asked our volunteers to show up an hour and a half before the event.  We conducted a refresher training for those that wanted it while others assisted with last-minute set up details.  We served almost 30 clients in 2008.  We had a staff of 25, with about half of them being attorneys.  We also had five translators available.  The event was a great success, and our site served more clients than any of the other metro-area sites.

2009's event was even better organized than the year before.  We had a similar team put together.  We'd increased our outreach efforts with more a of a web-presence, greater coordination with other ABE programs, and more confidence and enthusiasm than we'd had the previous year.  Unfortunately, we only served 13 prospective citizens.  This wasn't entirely unexpected, as the economy had begun its recession six months before.  Our Bloomington site was again the most successful of the metro-area sites, even with our low-numbers.  The low turn-out was disenheartening to our staff.  This led AILA to scale back subsequent Citizenship Day events, unfortunately.

What I Learned:  For me, these events were a turning point.  I realized that I could create more personal good in our community through community education than I could individually do through working as an attorney.  From a leadership standpoint, I learned some things that have stuck with me:  Small groups are more effective than large, there is incredible power in bringing like-minded organizations and people together, and much can be accomplished with a small budget.

I also learned from our poor showing in 2009.  Never underestimate external forces.  Had we worked to create a grant fund, I believe we would have been able to assist many more people.  We focused on repeating and improving upon our 2008 success.  We should have taken a wider-view.  Some surveys and interviews would have confirmed that many of our intended beneficiaries couldn't afford the filing fees that year.  Our inability to accurately assess the need we were trying to serve directly led to the event not being repeated in future years.

What I Would Do Differently:  Eight years later, I've developed my leadership skills much more than I had when we did our events.  This was such a top-down event, with no input from the people we were trying to serve.  Today, I would form a community advisory group for the event.  I would want to do some fundraising, with the goal of creating some full or partial grants to fund the filing fees.  This is something I feel we could build community around.