United We Dream works for the 11+ million undocumented immigrants in the US and they are using text messaging to help do this. We talk with Adrian, the data and technology manager about how they are using text alerts and communication to help immigrants keep up with the requirements/deadlines of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

Baifan, a Brooklyn based band, whose bass guitarist is Whole Whales’ Front-End Whaler, Simon Glenn-Gregg.

Episode 15

Speaker 1: This is Using the whole whale, a podcast that brings you stories of data and technology in the non-profit world. This is George Weiner, your host and the chief whaler at WholeWhale.com. Thank you for joining us.

So I am going to start off this week’s podcast with a somewhat struggling stat. There are over a 11 million undocumented people in the United States. Now as you can imagine, if you are undocumented in US there are any number of basic human rights that you simply don’t have access to. What’s more, reaching this population is pretty difficult. Because as you can imagine if you are undocumented in U.S, you don’t necessarily want to be given you know. Twitter handle left and right trying to build followers and reputation.

Welcome to Episode 15. We are talking with United We Dream that’s working on this kind of exact project to reach this population and help them register for the services that they are due qualified for. We are talking with Adrian the data and technology manager, United We Dream. And they are doing something very interesting by doing text messaging to help this population and reach this population to get access to the services they need and that they qualify for. Welcome to the show. All right, we are here with United We Dream and I am talking with Adrian. Can you tell us who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2: My name is Adrian and I am the data and technology manager for United We Dream.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And this is a wonderful organization. Can you tell us what United we Dream is trying to do?

Speaker 2: sure. United We Dream is the first and largest immigrant network in U.S with 25 state representatives with 52 billion across the country. And our main mission is to advocate for the rights of immigrant youth and their families. Right in many ways that we do that is advocating for access to education at the state level advocating for the pathway specific shared by the relief for families on document issues. And fighting deportation of many of our community members.

Speaker 1: Can you tell us a bit about how you got involved in what decision matters to you?

Speaker 2: Sure. For me in early 2009, when I went to college. I think it was the moment for me. I grew up in Texas which had this situation for quite a while again the situation is just the cause the original documented students can attend. In public universities as i speak usually the situation is only granted to U.S citizens but may be not granted to those undocumented irrespective of how long you lived in the state. Texas was the first one to grant that . For me it’s getting into college and having that access what you so badly realized in that hey i am not eligible to go for work. pretty much no kind of scholarship was really available to