Exciting News!

So, over the past year or so I have been preparing myself to submit an Equal Justice Works Fellowship application. This included meeting with the attorneys at KIND last year over winter break, completely reworking my schedule to include the Juvenile Justice seminar, writing two research papers regarding immigrant youth and/or special immigrant juvenile status, working to have one of those papers published, interning at KIND over the summer, putting together a proposal so we could get KIND's headquarter's on board, then writing the real proposal for the EJW Fellowship application with probably a total of 8 revisions in one month, and waiting for several months to hear anything from them.

Well, in the middle of final exams, they called. I was a semi-finalist, which means that I would have the opportunity to interview with potential sponsors. I was lucky enough to have two possible sponsors - Microsoft and a national law firm. For a while it seemed like my interviews would be during exam period - it was a bit of a nightmare. But both ended up being pushed back until this week. On Monday I interviewed with Microsoft at their Corporate offices in Redmond, just outside of Seattle, WA. Tuesday morning I was back home, and interviewing with the law firm in Santa Monica, CA. Although I was prepared, and confident in my interviews, I couldn't help but feel just a little bit of doubt.

Thursday I received notification from Microsoft that they were awarding me a 2011 EJW Fellowship!!! I'm still in shock!

This means that from September 2011 to August 2013 I will be working as an in-house attorney for KIND in Los Angeles. My project focuses on one-parent special immigrant juvenile status, and trying to establish procedural clarity for one-parent cases in order to develop a training manual that can be used by other attorneys in the future. (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is for kids for whom reunification with one or both parents is not viable due to abuse, neglect, or similar basis under state law, and for whom it is not in their best interest to be returned to their country of origin.) I will be partnering with UC Irvine Law School's pro bono programs so that UCI law students can work on the family law and immigration cases of youth in immigration deportation proceedings. This means that I'll training and supervising law students who will help with my cases, and that we will be focusing on serving kids in Orange County.

The fact that I even have a job lined up for after law school - is already a big deal. The fact that I have a job doing exactly what I wanted to be doing - is incredible! I feel like all the pieces fell into the right places this year.

I've got high hopes for this EJW Fellowship, and for this semester's Human Rights Semester in Practice in Guatemala.