Paid Opportunity: Immigrant Liaison Youth Fellows
Note: This opportunity is available to all high school juniors and seniors regardless of immigration status.
Who we are
The New York State Youth Leadership Council is the first undocumented youth led organization in New York. We work to empower immigrant youth to drop the fear attached to undocumented status and challenge the United States’ broken immigration system through leadership development, grassroots organizing, educational advancement, and self-expression. Our goal is clear: to give undocumented youth the tools and space to organize and create change in our communities. Teach Dream is the educator team at the NYSYLC. Our goal is to fight alongside undocumented youth against the institutionalized racism in the U.S. school, immigration, and criminal legal systems. We aim to do this by creating safer spaces for undocumented students, advocating for equity, opportunities, and access to resources for all students, and lifting student activism and leadership.
The NYSYLC has hired three immigrant liaisons in NYC public high schools for the 2021-2022 school year and plans to hire 2 middle school liaisons in the spring of 2022. An Immigrant Liaison is someone who works in a school in order to support immigrant and undocumented students and mixed-status families, as distinct from English language learners, including undocumented students who may have lived in the U.S. since a young age. At their school, the Immigrant Liaison will engage in various activities to support immigrant and undocumented youth and families, such as: professional development for staff at the school on topics including college/career pathways for undocumented youth, facilitating a Dream Team, connecting students and families to outside resources including legal resources (and ensuring that staff at the school know about those resources), working with school counselors to support undocumented seniors in the college/secondary transition process, etc.
We are looking for one high school junior and one high school senior to support our work with the immigrant liaisons by:
Meeting monthly with the immigrant liaisons to support their work in schools by sharing ideas and opinions on the work the immigrant liaisons are doing
Giving weekly feedback to the immigrant liaisons (via email)
Working with high school Dream Teams and the Immigration Liaison coordinators to build a campaign to get the NYC Department of Education
Working closely with the NYSYLC Education Manager, Co-Directors and Immigrant Liaison Logistics Coordinator
The ideal candidate is someone who is:
Self-accountable: We are looking for someone who is an independent worker and able to manage their time effectively with strong communication skills.
Committed: We are looking for someone who can commit to this 6 month contracting opportunity.
Comfortable sharing their ideas and experiences
Note: This opportunity is available to all high school juniors and seniors regardless of immigration status.
Desired experience:
Experience working with other youth in immigration advocacy (this could include conversations, projects, going to protests, etc). Experience in a Dream Team preferred but not required.
Priority will be given to youth who are directly impacted.
Demands:
Most work will be virtual meetings with some early mornings or late nights when educators are available. The work will be about 3 hours/week.
Compensation:
This is a 10 month contracting opportunity for $3,000.
To Apply:
Fill out the Google form by 9am on Wednesday, September 1: bit.ly/YLCyouthfellow
We will contact potential candidates for an interview. Final decisions will be made by the start of NYC DOE public school on September 13.
