0:00  
All righty, there we go. Hi, David. How are you today?

0:03  
I am very tired. Very good. Yeah. Very tired It's Tuesday. And yeah, Tuesday Good. Good day to be tired Wednesday too.

0:12  
Yeah, right. Right. Well, I have David Lee here with us today he is from Lighthouse immigrant advocates located in Holland, Michigan. He is acting and stepping in right now as Interim Executive Director. And Lighthouse immigrant advocates really is an organization that offers a very kind of unique model of of services that include case management, advocacy work, as well as community education. And I really am excited to talk to you today, David, just because you have, like LIA has done a ton of work within the just with refugees from Afghanistan, over the last year or two years. And we'd love to hear just a little bit about kind of your role in that a little bit more about kind of the staff and things that you've accomplished over the past year.

1:12  
Yeah, thanks. I like to call ourselves a small but mighty team, which I'm sure many people can identify with that have worked with or at nonprofits, because it often takes a lot of coordinating effort between like groups of people to get things done. Lighthouse has had Yeah, tremendous, tremendous growth. Actually, I've only been with organizations since last summer, I think June. And the first one of the first things I did was put out a press release, saying that we had expanded the team because until that summer, we had been maybe four or five staff full time. And that summer, we grew to like eight and a half, all the way up to nine and then 10 By the end of the year. So it was a big deal that we were expanding the work of an immigration law office as a nonprofit in Ottawa County in Holland, Michigan. So that was one of the first things I did was write that press release. And I think about to No, no, no, it wasn't even two, like 10 days after I started. There was a district court in Texas that ruled that DACA was unconstitutional, and basically stopped all new applications, which DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood childhood arrivals program. So that was shocking. To say least, I think our legal staff was like, yeah, it's not shocking. We knew it was coming. And I was like that, okay. Sure. And then about 20 days after that, Afghanistan, just dissolved, or I can say, like, felt the Taliban, however you want to say it, but essentially, there was like that massive Airlift. And our team got notification, because we're connected with a lot of the other nonprofit law offices here in Michigan, that because of the chaos, US military was trying to figure out where to go with these 100,000 plus people, formerly, Afghan nationals. And our organization really stepped up in a way that I, I'm still kind of hard to believe, I mean, I see the fruits of it now. But But imagining like, Hey, we're an office that does three, four, maybe 500 cases a year. And you're saying that we might have to take another 100 cases on our existing stuff. That's huge, right? It's like, no, it's actually 200. No, it's actually 250. No, it's actually 300. Now, it's actually gonna be like 330.

3:37  
Seems unimaginable almost. Yeah,

3:40  
there was, I mean, obviously, our chaos in terms of like, as a law office, how can we help us it's nothing compared to the actual experiences of the clients that we ended up actually connecting with. But still, it was like, as a law office, we have a huge burden to do things, not only to like the highest legal standard, but like, we have no room for ethics, you know, we have no room for there's no, there's no gray area in that ethics, like we have to be the most ethical. Our reputation depends on it. Our ability to serve clients will really depends on it. So what ended up happening is our team decided, like we raised our hand to say like, we will do all the legal intake so that every Afghan refugee or humanitarian parolee that comes to the West Michigan area that is sent here by the government has a single place they can go, so no one is going to be like calling random law offices and saying, Can you help with this? How much do you charge? Can you translate into the language I speak, which is Pashto or dari, or, you know, some version of Persian? So we became the single intake point, which meant that we actually ended up meeting with every single client in person. It was about 300 plus over the course of just a couple of months. And so, put my hat on of, hey, let's recruit some volunteers. Let's find funding, how much might this cost? How long are these cases? Going to take how much actual processing time we're looking at. And yeah, so I spent most of that fall and early winter like wondering, I think we might close next year because we don't have the six and a half million dollars, it's gonna cost. But instead, we, you know, we have volunteers that we quickly were able to train up to do intakes interviews with clients in scale, I mean, so doing, again, we do three, four or 500 intakes in a year. And then doing that same number about 300 330, in the space of like two and a half months is just a huge compression of time and energy. So we couldn't have done it without, we had so many volunteers show up that wanted to help. And many of them were able to go through the training, they had to get trauma informed, because honestly, like when you're interviewing, you have to ask questions about like, Why did you have to flee your country? And the answers you get are, can be all over the place. But you know, they can be pretty hard to listen to. And so we can't just throw volunteers into a room be like, oh, yeah, they were threatening to, you know, do violence and harm against my family. Like that's, that's not something that people just, it's irresponsible to put someone in a room where that's what they experienced. I mean,

6:15  
many of those people, I mean, allies and families probably bled I mean, yes, violence, but then also like, death. Yeah. So.

6:25  
So, yeah. So it was crazy. I mean, we didn't know how things were going to work for a while. But honestly, I give huge credit to my supervisor and my executive director whose her last day is going to be later this month. She just said, we're going to do it. And then we started looking for every possible funding source. We applied for a lot of grants with a lot of foundations we'd never talked to before, we really could not have done any of the work that we did. Our first funder, I'll call this one of my favorite foundations is the grand Haven area committee Foundation. And they were they're our first major funder that said, Yeah, we will help you do this project. And so there was a large grant that came along to just do this one project for a very specific group of people, which is not normally something that most foundations want to see. They want to impact a large group of people in a very measurable way. And I mean, yeah, so we had we basically cashed in all of our chips, if that makes sense. Yeah. That's what was necessary.

7:30  
Yeah, and I can imagine, I mean, let alone I mean, just services like providing, yeah, number one training for volunteers, but then also support. And on top of that, of course, all of your your different legal services. I mean, it could be anything from materials to I mean, in terms of like, services, like, Did you assist just in terms of helping folks get acquainted, but I mean, just housing services and things like that?

8:03  
Yeah. No, we didn't. That's the crazy thing. Yeah. So we worked closely. I mean, we have new partnerships now with the local resettlement agencies that are kind of like primary contact for all of the incoming people that are being resettled. But the scale of needing like, probably either, like a Special Immigrant Visa application, if not a full fledged asylum application for each of those people. Sure, our capacity expanded like, double overnight, but their their capacity also expanded by, like 10 times. So instead of managing 10, or 15, or 20 refugee cases, they were all of a sudden had 300, which is just insane. Yeah, like, all on the same boat together. So they were working on the housing and the employment and we were working on what can we do to ensure that they're not going to be deported after a year and a half of being here, because they did nothing wrong. But there's no clear guidance from the government about how to file for this. And so we, we impose the strictest standards legally assuming that they would have to apply for asylum, which they had to do within one year of variable United States. And that we would have to make the strongest possible case to the US government that these people deserve, you know, full on asylum status. Because the country that they grew up in is is not their home anymore. It's not safe for them to be there. So we've worked closely with local university, Wayne State University who helped us develop kind of like a good starting point of evidence that we knew would be the standard for like 80% of clients. And that's sped things up a ton. Oh, wow. Yeah.

9:44  
That's like developing a brand new intake process essentially. Yeah,

9:48  
basically, yeah. We deployed like a scheduling system for Afghan clients that we had never used before. That worked pretty well. And just A lot of materials, we ended up taking some time. So we got some grant funding, we use immediately to get as much of our materials translated into Dari and Pashto, because they had to be like two weeks after that, we learned that there's a good number of our clients that were going to be functionally illiterate, because of just you know, where they were in life, cultural wise, so we had to then take some of the more key pieces of that and record some videos. So we use something funny to actually record really like high quality videos, they are great. They're like, they look like professionally done. And we wanted to do that. Because one, we knew that some of these videos can be a resource for other organizations that are doing similar work. We're repeating the same stuff, but asylum, but what's going on how to meet with a client and how to meet with a lawyer. But we also wanted to give our clients that we're meeting with some semblance of like, Oh, these this is, this is like a legit office. This is not just like a nonprofit, we're held together by shoestrings. Like when you play your life in someone else's hands, legally, you want to be able to have some idea that like they know what they're doing. So that was really like appearance was really important. So we spent some of the grant funds on that. We met with everyone.

11:10  
We met I mean, it sounds like you like in terms of just like building, like, even just partnerships within the community. Of course, there's like organizations like the resettlement organizations, and things like that, that you historically probably have been working with closely, like, through kind of this shift. And over the last year, it seems like I mean, some of those partnerships have have been tightened or just expanded. So I guess, when thinking about even just like, you know, the next 2023 year, what what does that look like for you guys?

11:49  
So we will be welcoming a new executive director, which is huge. I think any organization that has a change in leadership or transition is going to there's a lot of opportunity there because, well, it's someone we don't know yet, probably. And we have a really strong well on boarded and very bought into a strategic plan. And that goes about five years. And so part of that plan included like strategic staff, staffing, increases programming and changes strategy, as well as like budget milestones and client service milestones. And so because of the fact that we raised our hands and said, Yes, we can handle, try our best to handle this huge influx of clients from a foreign country that is pretty foreign to most of us, not all of us, but most of us. You know, we've were like way ahead in our client service numbers. You know, we had hoped to stage like, hire staff, increase capacity, increase capacity, hire staff like constraint. And so we just kind of jumped three steps ahead there. It's gonna be really exciting. Ottawa County. I mean, this is part of my personal reason for wanting to do this has so many immigrants already formidable foreign nationals who have some version of either they might be citizens, and it'd be green card holders, they might be visa holders, but there's just a lot of people here that are not from here, originally. And that's really cool. I love that. It's not huge, but it's growing. And so next year, I hope we get to keep building on that with revamping our citizenship. And visa efforts for families that are trying to reunite. We're doing a lot more with asylum cases for clients, family members of people who have arrived here from the southern border, so of the United States. And because of our now huge experience with asylum cases on mass for one specific group, we have a dedicated staff member, staff attorney, who is just he all he does is asylum. He just that's just we didn't have that last year. I wish we had had that last year. But he started this year, that would have been really cool. No, but he has more capacity now to really deal with what I consider to be an absolutely humanitarian need. It is the immigration system, the sound system is so backed up is so inhumane. And so the best chances that someone achieving that stability is going to be through direct foldy representation that's done in a culturally competent manner. That's affordable. I mean, I don't know how else to say that. But like, the law doesn't always work for people, but we do our best to make it work for our client.

14:39  
Yeah, you're I mean, true advocates. Yeah. One to One advocate, which is, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I'm excited. I always see you guys on LinkedIn or posting events here and there. So it's just exciting. It's it's, you have so many moving parts. So I

15:00  
know that nothing Oh, no, I just remember. So I feel like I've been here for like 18 months now. 17. And it feels like I've been here for five years, which

15:10  
is again something. That's a good or bad thing. But I think it's great

15:14  
to be honest. Because I, again, I'm in my 30s, I'm, I'm here to work, I want to, I want to do you know, when I'm in my 50s, I want to probably sit, reflect, yeah, I started off by saying I was tired. So we had, we had 16 interns join us this summer, or staff at that time was nine people. Wow, it's 16 interns. And they, we would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean without them. Because they did so much. Most of them have interested in immigration law practice. So there, we had a couple grad students, but a lot of like college students that just wanted to spend a summer learning about what it was like to work in immigration law office. But others really wanted to work with the fact that we're doing a lot of asylum slash refugee cases. And so we put them to work, they went through some of the training that we put the volunteers through, and then some more so like they were, I mean, they were up there with our pro bono attorneys that were volunteering, doing a lot of intakes. So that was, that was a huge,

16:21  
huge lift. That's yeah, that's fantastic. And

16:25  
the one thing that I think we did was offer flexibility in terms of hours. And a lot of it couldn't be remote. That was not something we could negotiate because these interviews have to be in, like in person, like, you have to be in the room, you're doing translation by the phone, like the presence of non verbal cues are important as you're doing that work. But, you know, we could take someone for just eight hours a week, as opposed to requiring that you do 20 or 25. And we have two interns that would only be able to do one day because they have to work. Everyone has to make money. I mean, bills aren't going away. But that flexibility that our office was able to offer allowed us to accept a lot more people. And yeah, I'm so glad that they were there to help with that project.

17:08  
Yeah, that's I mean, especially valid are interns who are Yeah, have a have a passion, like, who want to be an integral part of the growth and have an innate sense of like, helping? Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's pretty impressive. I mean, 16. Do you do? Do you? I'm assuming some of those were offered for like school credit and stuff like that,

17:34  
too. Oh, okay. The vast majority were not

17:38  
just wanted experience in help and interest.

17:43  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there. Couple of them stayed on now for the fall. We usually have space for like two or three interns a semester. So 16 was a big jump. I think we have like five right now. But again, one of them is still just one day a week. Another one is like, three hours on two different days like flexibility. I think we'll hold on to that for as long as possible.

18:09  
Yeah. Yeah, I think I read here too. Within kind of your some of the information you mentioned, that LIA is like, fully on track to complete every single asylum seekers application, well, in advance of that one year kind of deadline. And then, I mean, the big thing that I was like, Oh, my gosh, putting putting LIA basically six to nine months ahead of nearly every other immigration service, like within the country doing similar work, which is, I mean, that's a huge accomplishment.

18:45  
Yeah, that was, in some ways, the hard part and the easy part. I think, because we jumped on it we really invested hard into, like, what does the process look like? And the feedback from the pro bono attorneys who spent so many hours actually doing work for free, which is huge. Was that we were very organized. It was one of the best organized clinics that ever, ever volunteered for and that was a huge deal for us, because we had never organized a clinic of the scale before. It's usually like one day or an afternoon, we do one specific thing to like 20 30 people and doing interviews for months, months, and we've probably spent eight of the last 12 months doing interviews. Wow. Yeah. So but yeah, six to nine months, everyone else has pretty much started to catch up now. So that's good. But it does mean that our cases are taking longer, which is fine. But our first couple batches of applications got returned to us, like, unbelievably quickly. may have been because we were one of the first to apply. Yeah. And they're all it's by region. So like there's the Chicago office. I couldn't tell you what the other ones are, but like their regions. So anyway, Yeah. Yeah, I think if I could mention just one more thing is that and you know, I know this. I know. I'm gonna talk about neon for a second. Yeah. Thanks. So we. So neon was a huge time saver for us because we had a lot of new first time donors that came to us that heard about us on the TV or on the radio or just you know, from a friend and not only just making first time gifts, but wanting to reach out and find out how they could volunteer. And so neons automated tools, and they'll be ready to like quickly set up a custom like Acknowledgement Page for incoming like, that was huge, because we could immediately get the information to people that wanted them right away. Not to skip a phone call with me, because there was no time for that. But to be able to, like, quickly adjust that and to do it. And like literally, we did it in like an hour. It was great. Yeah, that's so yeah, having an easy to use page and not just having to, you know, live our way through the website. So I think having a core CRM that was in place that really integrated well, with our email software, we use neon for email. So that was also huge. Let me know how many people we could expect at different stages of the project. So yeah,

21:18  
yeah, yeah, I know, I always I always showcase and I think I've told you this before I always showcase your page, because you do like all of the best practices in terms of storytelling about the financial impact of where our donors dollars are being put towards and what types of services and just graphically looks an aesthetically it's it's pretty. Yeah, I guess, because it's mid October. I know you launched a Giving Tuesday campaign, I believe last year, called the welcome challenge. Yeah. Are you guys I'm assuming doing some type of GivingTuesday campaign this year?

21:59  
I don't know. It's a weird. Yeah, no, it's like October 18. I'm supposed to know. I don't know. It's weird. It's so we live in a there's a lot of politics right now. And there's a lot of what I would call like media shouting, and just it's a very thick crowd. Sure. And I'm wondering, maybe I should, I mean, obviously, we want to take advantage of that day. But we also want to be kind of mindful of the fact that like, there's a lot going on. And maybe our efforts will be better placed doing other things. Now, that said, I'm pretty sure my board has plans for what we're going to do on Thursday. So we're gonna do something.

22:44  
It's interesting, though, it's like a Giving Tuesday is that you bring up a good point from from that regard. It's, it's almost like Is it is it? Is it the right time? Is it more meaningful to have an launched some other type of of campaign that will be more catered to our our mission and our vision and be accepted by the community at large?

23:10  
I have been part of many different kinds of GivingTuesday campaigns in the past. I've loved all of them. But I think there's a part of me that wants to do it the best we can. And if I can't see that happening, then I want to reframe like, I don't know. Yeah, I know that our our welcome challenge was pretty successful last year, it helped us close part of the gap for our translation services. So we spent at this point, hundreds of 1000s of dollars on translating documents on interpretation live over the phone for our clients, because we've done 1000s of hours of interviews, and none of us here in the office know how to translate between English and Pashto or Dari. One person is getting closer. She's been taking lessons Actually, she's really learning. Yes, she's our outreach manager. Her name is Ileana and she has gone out of her way to start learning Pashto and Dari. So she's like getting to the point where she's conversational already. Wow. But she's so the person calling our clients and just taking care of them about just Yeah. So super encouraging. In terms of that, I think, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just curious. Probably look at the neon webinar emails. The doing Tuesday, and I put one together in a week because I'm

24:24  
sure you go. Yeah. I'm hosting it with my colleague Tovah, you, really? So I'll help you out. Yeah, we have some pretty cool built in templates that are that are nice, but yeah. Awesome. Well, I know we're coming up on time here, but I do. I mean, I just, yeah, I really wanted this interview to be posted in GX and I think I mean, LIA has just done so much amazing work without actually reducing any of your capacity. I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing. I mean, the services, the programs that you provide. And of course, I'm biased because I'm from Holland, Michigan, but it's I mean, it's just, it's really amazing to see. So I mean, you're you're not only advocates but your support your volunteers. You're a welcoming, safe, stable environment that people can come to and and know that they can get those services and ask questions and feel safe. So any last any last words for Gx?

25:35  
I'm glad that you're taking advantage of what I consider to be a remarkable resource. And you owe it to yourself to learn as much as you can to do the work that you need to be doing because the world needs good philanthropy and all kinds. So thanks for watching, and hopefully I get to steal your work later. That's what I'm looking

25:55  
forward to. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, David. Have a good rest of your day. Rest up and we'll see you in a couple of days at GX. Yeah, a

26:05  
couple days. Thank you so much, Sam.

26:06  
Yeah. All right. Bye.

26:09  
Bye.

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