The Community Activism Law Alliance was selected as one of the 7 recipients of the 2014 Flom Incubator Grants from the Skadden Fellowship Foundation. CALA will use the funding to provide community legal education and outreach to immigrants in the Chicago metropolitan area.

95% of all immigrants in Illinois live in the Chicago metropolitan area. The total suburban immigrant population has increased to over 1.2 million in 2010, with expected continued growth, while the available legal services in the suburbs have drastically been reduced. To address this imbalance, CALA will create a suburban immigrant rights outreach and training pilot program to provide free outreach, trainings, and workshops on immigration law and rights.

The program would consist of monthly programs held in different locations in suburbs outside of Chicago, where there are large immigrant communities. CALA staff will work with our community partners to create “know-your-rights” materials and presentations targeted towards suburban immigrant populations, in both English and Spanish. Additionally, we will explore different strategies and methodologies for reaching out to and effectively educating immigrants about their legal rights. Our goal, in addition to the provision of the legal services, would be a fully-developed curriculum of materials—pamphlets, flyers, training guides, resource referrals, infographics, and presentations. The project would additionally help us to create a report analyzing approaches for conducting outreach to (immigrant) communities.

For more information about the Skadden Fellowship Foundation and the Flom Incubator Grant, visit: http://www.skaddenfellowships.org/.