Alison Yager has a long-standing commitment to working with children and young people.  She studied education in college, and afterwards worked for two years at the Children’s Defense Fund in New York.  Before law school, Alison traveled in Mexico for a year, where she worked with homeless youth living at Covenant House.  

Blong Yang’s project focused on language access to services for immigrant communities, particularly for those who were limited- or non-English speaking.  As the immigrant population increases, the needs of these immigrants, such as the need for language access, are not being met.  Legal requirements regarding language access are widely ignored, and in turn, immigrants find themselves at the mercy of huge, unsympathetic bureaucracies that cannot and will not communicate with them.  

Celia Yapita was based at the Lake City, Florida, office of her host organization, about an hour's drive from her hometown of Gainesville.  From her clinical experiences, Celia found that while limited resources existed to help battered women obtain the often short-term protection of restraining orders, funding limitations translated into very little help for women wishing to take the next important and long-term steps in escaping their abusive relationships.  This fellowship works to facilitate the independence and empowerment of domestic violence survivors beyond the protective order process.  

Stacey Young advocates for the reproductive rights of low-income and minor women in Western Pennsylvania.  The threats to these women’s reproductive rights and access to reproductive health care stem from onerous state laws, inadequate sexuality education in public schools and a dearth of family planning clinics.  The region’s few clinics are limited to urban centers and often contend with aggressive resistance from anti-choice forces.  

As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, Adriana Ysern developed an Immigrant Children’s Watch project with her host organization entitled “Immigrant Children: Not to be Forgotten.  ” Adriana focused on providing for the legal needs of unaccompanied immigrant children in and out of INS custody, as well as non-citizen youths with guardians.  Her work ranged from filing political asylum claims and Special Juvenile Visas to filing petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).  

My project is focused on helping Asian Americans modify their loans, stay foreclosure proceedings, pursue foreclosure scams, and defend against unlawful detainers filed against tenants.  Because I can speak Cantonese, I am responsible for reaching out to the entire Cantonese-speaking region of Southern California.  .