May 7, 2007
It is with great excitement that we announce to you the growth of our organization in order to meet the diverse needs of our community and the creation of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) as the home for our new initiatives. In the upcoming year we will be restructuring our organization to address some of the changing needs of the Bay Area Arab community by engaging in community education, leadership development, and empowerment programs. AROC programs will be focused around local work in the San Francisco area, and we hope will enable us to strengthen our connections to you and our other community partners.
You will continue to see us doing the local work we have done in the past. The ADC, as part of AROC, will still run the Discrimination Hotline to document cases of discrimination and hate crimes, provide referrals, and advocate on behalf of survivors. Other AROC initiatives will continue to engage the Arab community to participate in Bay Area immigrant rights and anti-war mobilizations. We are very proud of our recent and ongoing success in our new Arab American Legal Services (AALS), another initiative of AROC. Through this program we are able to help low and moderate income San Francisco residents with their immigration legal needs totally free of cost. Since February of this year, our devoted staff attorney, Christine Stouffer, has served over fifty clients with the partnership of the Arab Cultural Community Center and the Tenderloin Outpatient Clinic. The goal of this program is to provide legal services, as well as to conduct Know Your Rights education and empowerment among our immigrant community members.
In this period of growth, we want to welcome our new staff person, Lily Haskell and acknowledge the tireless work of Rayan El-Amine, the outgoing Program Director of ADC-SF. Rayan has moved on to be a full time professor at San Francisco City College, devoting his time to educating our youth about Arab history, inspiring and empowering new leaders. Our current work would not be possible without Rayan's leadership, commitment to the goals of ADC-SF, and continued devotion to a stronger Arab community.
Lily Haskell joined us this past January to help complete the establishment of the AALS program and the new AROC. Lily is a dedicated activist who brings to the organization experience in community organizing and community legal work. We are very excited to have Lily working with us and look forward to more of the remarkable enthusiasm and leadership she has demonstrated in her first four months.
We will continue to update you, our friends, constituents and allies, as our organization continues to evolve. Please contact us if you have any questions, or to get involved with our programs—with all our growth we truly appreciate your ongoing support of our work, and your commitment to justice for Arab communities.
Salaam ~ Peace,
The Collective and Staff