Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 2003Appendix 4Exercise: Thinking About a TopicFor homework on Day 2, the representatives from each partner organization will prepare anevent on a particular topic to demonstrate in front of the rest of the participants. Please spendsome time before coming to the training thinking of a topic that you would like your group tofocus on for its demonstration. The topic should be something of importance to the communitythat you are serving. If you were really planning an event in the community you would spend aconsiderable amount of time discovering what issues are of the most importance to thecommunity in which you are working. After all, it is the community that must decide what itneeds and must provide much of the work to meet those needs. But for the purposes of thisexercise, we will let you pick a topic.In selecting a topic, think about the feasibility of working on the project and getting others in thecommunity to work on it, and the possibility of the project being a success. Success may meanwinning the issue but may also include merely moving the community to action.Everyone at the training who represents your organization will discuss suggested topics andtogether choose one to work on for this training. Your office will not have to do any work on thetopic you choose except for the purposes of an exercise on Day 3.Possible topics include:• Trying to keep the INS from building a detention center in the community• Garnering community support around the Latino Immigrant Fairness Act (LIFA)• Supporting bilingual education• Increasing minimum wage and working towards having a living wage standard in thecommunity• Unaccompanied immigrant minor issues• School issues• Community safety issues• Community housing issues• Workplace health and safety issues• Encouraging people to apply for naturalization• Encouraging people to voteOn the evening of Day 2, training participants from your organization will choose a topic. OnDay 3, as a group, you will make a presentation on that topic. Each group must also determinethe format of its presentation.Some possibilities:• Have a press conference—write a press release and host a mock press conference withthe audience as the press.12-46