Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

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Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 2003Chapter 9Examples of Immigrant Community Leadership, Civic Participation andVolunteer Programs§ 9.1 IntroductionOver the past few years many community-based organizations throughout the country have beenactively working with immigrant communities to help the immigrants develop their leadershipskills and become more active civic participants. The programs have developed in various ways,with varying degrees of success. In this chapter we discuss several of these programs. Each projectfocused on a different theme and many of them defined leadership differently. Each project wasunique in every aspect except that they all tried to involve immigrants in serious ways in civicaffairs and help them develop their leadership skills.It is wonderful that many community-based organizations that have traditionally worked onimmigrants’ rights issues or provided immigration law services are now developing leadershiptraining and civic participation projections. This chapter highlights two of the most successful andearliest grassroots immigrant rights programs to offer opportunities for immigrants to developleadership skills and become active in civic participation. The chapter also features programs thatstarted conducting leadership and civic participation projects more recently, but with great success.We think readers from across the country can learn from the case examples described in this chapter.§ 9.2 Case Example One: Centro BilingueFrom 1994-97 Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) and Centro Bilingue, a grassrootsimmigrant led advice and referral agency in the small community of East Palo Alto, Calif.,successfully trained three groups of dedicated volunteers from the Redwood City and East PaloAlto communities in a variety of leadership skills. The volunteers received training on a variety ofskills including the following:• helping people apply for naturalization• public speaking, holding press conferences• conducting outreach• running meetings• combating anti-immigrant myths• teaching people about their civic rights and responsibilities• educating their communities about the importance of learning English and the availabilityof English as a second language classes• understanding and interacting with city councils, commissions, school boards and otherinstitutions• The leaders attended some council and commission meetings and worked specifically onthe issue of increasing the accessibility of youth services in East Palo Alto.9-1
Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant CommunitiesJanuary 2003After participating in the training, the leaders were extremely enthusiastic about continuing theiractivities. They each developed a plan on how they would continue to be leaders in theircommunities, be involved in outreach, and volunteer for important activities such as Redwood City2000, a planning committee formed to help influence the future of the city.After completing the trainings, the leaders had more confidence and felt much more comfortableconducting community presentations, and their natural leadership skills emerged. The leaders thenwent into the community and practiced their new skills by leading or participating in over 170community events, reaching nearly 2,700 people.In addition to conducting workshops, the leaders became recognized in their communities astroubleshooters on various issues that affect immigrants in East Palo Alto and surroundingcommunities. Their skills improved so much that many have even become experts in naturalizationand in helping others with civic responsibilities. One leader taught English as a second language,another helped organize classes to teach people literacy skills, another taught catechism classes ather church and another became a resource for the Site Council at a local high school regardingissues affecting Latinos. A couple of the leaders went on to be board members of Centro Bilingue(Centro) and nearly all the leaders contributed significantly to Centro’s activities as volunteers byhelping with citizenship drives and completing green card applications. A couple of the womenwho were among those trained opened up a small business that provided party goods and servicesto the residents of East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park, two cities with limited services andbusinesses in the city limits. A group of leaders met with East Palo Alto City employees aboutissues involving safety and youth. Leaders met with politicians such as their CongressionalRepresentative on issues important to the local immigrant community.The pedagogy of all the trainings in this project was student-centered and very interactive. It wasan experiential training that included training techniques such as the following:• Exercises in which the participants practiced public speaking, running meetings,writing responses to editorials, advocating on behalf of their communities, holdingpress conferences and generally working with the media. Not only did trainers lectureon these topics, but also each student practiced mock events.• Group discussions on various issues including the importance of naturalization, civicparticipation and combating anti-immigrant myths, which allowed participants to shareideas and practice leading discussions.• Role-plays and demonstrations that gave participants the opportunity to see good andbad examples of leadership.• Critiques and evaluations by all participants of each other’s performances to enhancelearning and improvement by all.The trainings were conducted in a manner that modeled the use of participatory learningtechniques when conducting civic engagement activities. The idea of training communities to beself-sufficient was stressed throughout the trainings. Thus, when the leaders conducted their ownoutreach activities, they did more than provide important information. They also demonstrated totheir communities that community members can have both the capacity and skills to educate oneanother about issues, plan and lead meetings, and make public presentations.9-2
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Inspiring Leadership in Immigrant Communities - ILRC

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