66 Citizen And Immigration Information Tool
We're joined by folks from the [Center for Employment Training Immigration and Citizenship Program (CET-ICP)](https://www.cet-icp.org/about-cet-icp/) and [Code for San Jose](https://www.codeforsanjose.org/) to talk about the Citizen and Immigration Information Tool they've built together. From CET-ICP we hear from their Director, Monica Limas, as well as Valdo Drozdek, a technology and outreach specialist. From Code for San Jose we chat with their Director of Frontend Engineering, [Joey Richardson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-richardson-97206953/).<br><br>Join us on [Discord](https://discord.gg/hECzBJh)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Either that, or maybe I'll rant about a topic for a while. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the show. Joey, Baldo, Monica, thank you all for taking the time today to come on Civic Tech Chat. Could each of you introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about what you do?
My name is Monica Lemus, and I'm the director of the immigration and citizenship program at Center for Employment Training. And we provide affordable immigration services to mixed families and promote civic engagement.
My name is Valdo Drozdek, and I'm a technology and outreach specialist. I help to organize the workshop, workshop logistics, technology development, and implementation of it at our workshops and throughout our agency.
And, hi, my name is Joey Richardson. I am the director of front end engineering here at Code for San Jose, and also a, senior UI UX engineer with, SunPower.
And for each of you, what is your personal why? The thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.
Yeah. For me, it's it's about the love of what I do, the love for my community, and, and my belief for these sort of projects. It should be code for the people by the people. And, it's not just nonprofits that we work with with Code for San Jose, but, we work directly with the city of San Jose now too. And, even cross brigades with, some other national projects. And it's it all ties back in the love for love of what I do.
I wanna help as many people as I can. Affordable legal services for immigrants are scarce and underfunded. And we are working with Code for San Jose to create a citizenship immigration and information tool known as SIT. The tool enables green card holders to apply for citizenship free of charge. Finding legal counsel is pretty pretty challenging for most people. Now think about it if you were a non English speaker and who was low income and not very tech savvy. As someone who comes to The United States or who came to The United States at the age of seven, I can relate to some of those challenges. Growing up, most of the time, I was my family's translator and advocate. I'm excited about the tools that we are creating because it's enabling us to help more people and the people in our community who really need our services. Okay. Well, I'm
Okay. Well, just like for Joey, I think he said it perfectly when he said love. I love what I do. Main thing is I want to help as many people as possible and pretty much at any cost. These projects that we do, they take a lot of time, a lot of time, and sometimes it's more like a twenty four hour marathon or longer, and I'm in it, just so that we can help people. I love working with other agencies, and that's what gets me going. Being able to work with, one of our agency partners or code for San Jose. I have background in industrial design, product design specifically, not so much on the software development or UI or UX, but the design process is pretty much the same. So I get to use these skills that, I decided to kind of put away as a background, but I'm very much still involved in design process, designing the workshops, and help to create these tools that in the long run and actually already have have helped so many people. That's what's so amazing being able to see results. Like, in the last two workshops, we helped over 1,200 people. That's amazing with this tool that rose out of the need for us to, be able to, to register people and be able to screen them for the, for the services for the citizenship services. And, also, with the help of, Code for San Jose, there's no way that we would be able to pull this off. I have zero coding experience, but I can barely figure out how Zoom works. Come on. So being able to work with with different agencies, I love languages. That's another thing. I love other cultures. I love languages. Being involved, in an with an agency like CT, immigration, and citizenship program, I've I can say, hands down, I've never had well, I was going to say a job. It's not a job. It's I live I live the work I do. Yeah. I love it. Just like Joey said, it is the love that keeps me coming back and waking up.
So I I think that's a good segue into our main topic there. I think you're starting to allude into what we're gonna be talking about a lot today, which is CIT, the Citizen, Immigration, and Information tool, which is something y'all have partnered together to build together. And, I gather that, part of, like, what that's meant to do is to support this event y'all have been throwing called, virtual citizenship day. Could you talk to us a a bit about what that's all about?
Sure. COVID for San Jose helped us develop the SIT tool, which helps educate people on the rights and responsibilities of becoming a US citizen, as well as prescreen them for eligibility. Citizenship day is an annual event sponsored by the county of Santa Clara for close to thirty years, and I've led the event for the last ten. During the last in person workshop in 2019, we registered over 1,700 individuals. Approximately 1,200 attended, and we completed two fifty nine citizenship applications all in one day. In 2020, we faced many challenges, including COVID restrictions, decrease in funding, and staff layoffs. In fact, my staff went from 10 to six, and Baldo and I are the only staff members dedicated to this project. The rest of my staff concentrates on providing other immigration legal services. In September 2020, our first virtual workshop was held in Spanish, English, and Vietnamese, and approximately 800 individuals registered. 332 people were educated and prescreened. A 104 citizenship applications were completed as well as send as well as 70 fee waivers. In May 2021, our second virtual workshop was held in 14 different languages. We registered close to 3,000 individuals, 754 people were educated in prescreen, 223 citizenship applications were completed, as well as a 141 fee waivers. In total, we completed 327 citizenship applications as well as 211 fee waivers during the pandemic. This translates into a cost savings for the immigrant community of approximately $200,000 for free services completed or rendered. This wouldn't have been possible without the assistance, dedication, and amazing work of coach from San Jose.
That's that's incredible. The, the amount of impact you're describing there is it's it's hard to even just imagine. It's like sitting here. Right? That's so many people's lives effective. And something I heard there is you managed to keep that going during a pandemic, which I imagine is a unique challenge, whether it's the fact that you're doing virtual events, whether it's even probably just, like, having to do basic basic outreach to folks you're helping.
And it was that it was also we also had, from our funders. We were able to access the money that we needed in order to create this tool, so we had to think outside the box. And luckily, Code for San Jose helped us out with that. And we it's just been phenomenal. I we couldn't believe it. I was actually really scared that our our target demographic would not welcome this new type of tool because we know that a lot of them are still living in the shadows. And so I was just blown away by the numbers that we were able to, engage and the amount of applications that we could complete we could complete with the assistance of this amazing tool.
And speaking of that tool, I as folks are kind of engaging with things like that event, what what sort of role does the tool have in that in that, like, that process?
It actually actually allows us to educate and prescreen people from the comfort of their home. On their, on their phone or on their computer, we're able to assist them in 14 different languages. It's all confidential, and it help and it quickly helps us to assess the eligibility of large number of individuals efficiently and with minimal staff time. This is very important because the majority of our people that we serve live below the federal the federal poverty guidelines. They don't apply for citizenship because of because of financial difficulties. And these tools help us to help welcome them in into our society.
Tool itself, it provides a tremendous amount of support in terms of screening. Since we're not doing, person or in person workshops, at least for the moment. And we also hope to use this tool once we can, do the workshops again in person to help us speed up the screening process, which is necessary to conduct our workshops. Make sure that the people are ready to apply for citizenship. And hopefully in the future, we'll be able to also use it with, other immigration services like DACA and
registering people to vote. Actually, hopefully in the medical service, you know, area, that type of thing. Also, doing community education
as well.
Referrals referrals for services. So we're not just looking We're doing immigration, but we're also hoping that other nonprofits will be able to use it. And, yes, alternate ways of helping people to register with to get medical information. There is such a thing as, the whole person model that the county of Santa Clara has been, talking about. So we're also looking how this tool can potentially help to, help people find services that they need.
Something that was mentioned there was, this idea that, you know, there are folks in this process that are resource constrained. Right? And that they need access to resources, whether that's, some of those we were just talking about before, or, legal expertise as one thing that I imagine folks maybe don't realize how difficult it is is going through that, not like, that naturalization process. I, there isn't I as far as I know, there's, like, entire legal practice that's all about this this space. So if you're in that position, it might be then difficult to go through if you don't have access to that. Could, could y'all talk a little bit about the kind of impact it has connecting somebody with that kind of resource?
When the user or, the citizen applying for citizenship would be, done with taking this, the questionnaire, Voldo would get the response on his end. And from there, he would know what language they took it in, and, any of their responses, and be able to assign them to an agency, for where they would need to go, who would be best to help them out. They would either specify the language, and that would determine that, or if he saw if Aldo saw that, just they needed it to be guided elsewhere, so he could guide them after they responded still through the tool. The tool wouldn't necessarily handle that negotiation or that, communication. It would just allow Volvo to streamline the process.
Did I get that right, Volvo? Yeah. That's that's the basic idea. I mean, we have to translate the in person model into this virtual new model. But the process itself pretty much stayed the same. There are questions that are being asked. We call them, red flag questions. So these, these questions, if answered correctly, the person can proceed with the workshop, but there are certain things that will set the red flags off, that needed additional programming of making sure that the proper result will be displayed on the back end of the tool. And there are several questions that we need, for example, for our reporting. So this tool also accommodates that as well as the simplest question, And that was very interesting. So every single person applying for citizenship, needs to have a green card and needs to have that green card for a certain amount of time. And we have to provide dates, to the, code for, San Jose, appropriate dates within which we can provide these services. And the dates are totally dependent on the green card itself of when it was issued. So one criteria, the person has to be in The US or with a green card for five years, four years and nine months to be exact. That's when, somebody can start applying for citizenship. And then the other criteria is for the person to have, to be married to a US citizen, and they can start applying as early as two years and nine months. So given those dates and the date of the workshop, we have to work backwards to make sure that we do not helps, people too early. We gave ourselves about a month to complete the entire workshop, but we have to have this date window, which is extremely important. And Joey and the team, oh my god, they actually came through. Everything worked. And we had 754 people, who were screened, watched the video, and answered the questions.
So you mentioned this the the idea of, like, the these questions having, very specific time frames. I imagine that there was a bit of a a research process of a sort to try to identify, oh, well, the questioner has to be aware of this specific thing. Or, oh, if a person chooses this answer, there's another maybe route you go down. Could you all talk a bit about the process y'all went to together to try to discover those things and then figure out then how, like, to incorporate them into the work that was being done?
In terms of, figuring them out, I think you, Waldo and Monica were almost just told this needs to be hap this needs to happen. This needs to be in this window, and we need to be able to know this criteria. Translating that into, this web app tool, it's just a matter of discussing the requirements, and then, well, putting the puzzle pieces together. In terms of navigating that, kinda beginning sort where you have the the date range that it must be in and if they're married or if they're not, that is the most complex part of the application currently, and it's got a lot of overhead. But it's also we put that control in Volvo's hands and the organization's hands. It's run by essentially an Excel spreadsheet, almost like you could think of it. I let I love the analogy that Volvo had the other day of a punch card of the old machines, where you would specify the computer code in the spreadsheet of just criteria, punch it into the tool, and out comes the workshop. And so it was just a matter of analyzing those requirements, getting the correct flow, and then we had user testing, with journey mapping and several Code for San Jose members who, not I should specify not everyone within Code for San Jose is a coder or a hacker. We have many who are just basic user testers or even just user researchers, user experience people. And we did all sorts of journey mapping before a line of code was written. And we put ourselves in shoes of a, 65 year old grandpa who is coming into the country and just trying to use his family to navigate through the application. We had, user store, journey maps for a 35 year old coming from this country. So it was really a matter of discussion with our, not only the team, the developer team, but then the user testing groups. What did they find? Who were the people that they put together? And then also, bringing in Volta for the discussions. It was a lot of discussion before any code is really written. And we knew that, down the line, we would need to have more control of these time frames or these sort of requirements before someone could take this questionnaire. And so we knew we wanted to put the control into Baldo's hands. And, I've built applications like this before where it it's like a punch card and it comes out, but this is the cleanest, simplest one I've worked on, and it's not too broad as the more messes I've been a part of. So and because I've been aware of those other projects and the way that they did that before, in previous jobs, I know what to avoid. So we've been pretty good about that so far. And, mostly, it's just you have to discuss correctly. You have to get the requirements right. And that should not just be a discussion between engineers and, customers per se, like, Valdo's team, the organization that you're working with, but it should be the people that you're directly affecting and how they feel about it.
Yeah. I can attest to that. Yeah. That was a lot of conversations. Work with some awesome people. I mean, so many wonderful, wonderful brains, went into this, into the discussions. And so many people from, Code for San Jose have their hands and brains and hearts and souls into this project. And it's still not over. We're still working out the kinks and polishing up, the tool itself. So we, as agencies, will have more power in our hands, instead of employing so much time and and so much work and making it so involving for CODA for San Jose. Hopefully or we're hoping to actually be able to take over and, gosh, the the punch card is just the most amazing thing. I mean, you've got this it's almost like a musical box where you change the you just change that little roll with encoded music, and the box plays different tune. I mean, it's just so beautifully simple. That's what got me so excited. And once Joey started, explaining to me, the exact works behind the sit tool, I was I was just taken, truly taken and stunned. And so many people also came together. It's not just that Code for San Jose helped us out with this SIP tool and developed it. No. There are other more like detour questions and requests that, Code for San Jose, was able to help us out with. We had some issues with our own website, which Code for San Jose gladly jumped on and, wanted to help. There with when I was setting up that citizenship day, it was the one in September 2020. When I was setting that up, it was the first virtual workshop. I was a little bit freaked out, but, Adriana, she's a UX, UI designer, and she came in and helped out with, part of the setup because I was having difficulties with, with, Excel and Google Sheets. And she came up with this wonderful idea, just grazed over what I already had, and organized it in an amazing way, and made it so much easier for the workshop to be conducted. So it's just this, yeah, the design process. I mean, it's a very fluid, very, very organic, process. And yet there are these rigors that have to be instilled such as you have to find out who the users were. The conversations took place, around the users, what the agencies need, what the participants need, what they expect, what we can expect from participants, how they will react potentially, having lack of knowledge on how to navigate technology, changing the questions, or changing the flow of the questionnaire, Putting that button or not putting that button there. And I was part of the conversation though I have no clue about coding, but the design background also helped me. And I have learned so much also along the way. I mean, it's just a very fluid, as I said before, it's a very fluid, very organic process that we went through. And we're still going through it. One one day at a time, I guess.
And transparent. That's been one thing that we've Amen. Yeah. We've been transparent as, like, costs, consulting, experiences that we've had, like, with other, organizations, just even, like, stuff that Volvo has gone through with the eMigrate website, other just painstaking projects. We've just been transparent. Like, this is what they should have done, or this is what we can do, and these are the services that can be provided. It's not always software as, you know, as Valdo says. Adriana, he's she's fantastic with not only designs, but Excel spreadsheets. We have many, many, like, talented people within Code for San Jose that just keeps surprising even us with what these volunteers are capable of. And it's all volunteers. It's all volunteers and open source. Anyone can come in and work on it, basically, anytime as long as we're awake too. And we still have the keys to, allow it in or not. So it's not like just a bunch of crap can get in. So it's, yeah, it's all volunteers, and then it's all, again, for love.
Something you both mentioned there is interesting. So, Joe, you you, Joe, you talked about transparency. And, Vadhi, you're, like, very emphatically agree with that being part of this. And I think something that's important with that is for two organizations to be able to work together that way, to like be able to have candor, to have those sorts of conversations, there's like a level of trust you have to build up. You have to be able to feel vulnerable with each other as people in these groups. Could you all talk a bit about, I guess, like the story of how that's developed as you all have worked together? Are there things that maybe happened early on that made it easier? I'd be curious. I because I imagine folks could learn from from this experience you all have had.
Well, we've got this awesome consultant. Her name is, Janet Sosa, and she's been consulting with us. It it just yeah. I I I'm trying to speak with in these technical and proper terms, but consultant, friend also is it's a relationship. It's a friendship. It's trying to understand and trying to move forward with projects or whatever it is. Anyhow, so, Janet has met Joey at one of the I believe it was the Facebook best practices training, somewhere back in January 2020.
Yeah. It was some event, I think I don't even remember what cultural center it was at, but I do remember just meeting her. And I just, said, yeah. I'm a volunteer organization. I do coding code projects. She said, oh, I know someone you need to talk to. And from there, we exchanged information. I didn't have business cards at the time, but I gave her my contact info. And then, both Janet and Baldo came to our next Hack Night. At the time, it was called Hack Night for Code for San Jose. And, Waldo just pitched the project, pitched the idea, and we just hit it off, really. But the honesty and transparency that's built up, it's it's really because none of us are getting paid. Well, on the code for San Jose side transparency, none of us are getting paid. So we have to be upfront. Like, we might say that we can agree to this, but we're volunteers and people people have lives. They literally drop off the face of the earth. And it's also happened vice versa where I completed a whole project, just needed keys from, their email key chain stuff for automatic email deployments, and they completely gone. I don't know if the organization just left me in the dust, but projects are ready to go, and they were gone. So those kind of experiences just it's I've learned best be upfront. Like and from there, it's like, oh, okay. Well, let's see what we can do. And it's a matter of making those small goals, and commitments and meeting them. And so just having the next meeting, showing up to the next meeting, saying that, okay, we can try to accomplish this in the next meeting, by the next meeting. And just those baby steps that we started and continue to grow from. During the process of development, Voldo would call us and be like, hey. Look. We just lost more staff members. We also got budget cuts, and we don't know if we're gonna have this tomorrow. So and we stand. And the deadline kept getting cut in half. It was the first, like, January, then November, and then September. And we're like, okay. And so But it worked. When you just But it worked. It worked. But it worked. When you just have all that hit demand. Yeah. Yeah. You just the transparency builds up, and the honesty builds up, and lo and behold, you're friends. And you still haven't met.
Believe it or not, faith. Yeah. I have faith. I mean
We will soon. Code for San Jose is actually having its first hybrid event soon. I just got the email. I need to read through it. So we'll be meeting in person soon, COVID restrictions and all. So hopefully, yeah, hopefully, we'll finally meet.
That's fine. I'll I'll I'll be happy to show up in a bubble, but I'll be happy to show up.
Something something else y'all mentioned there that I think represents a unique challenge, and you talked about it in the sense that, oh, this kind of helps drive that need for transparency is, you know, this is a project that, you know, y'all are working with volunteers. Probably of varying backgrounds, varying skills, but working with volunteers to try to get something done is something that has its own set of unique challenges. Whether it's like, as you mentioned, people dropping off the face of the earth, people having lives. You know, sometimes the time commitments, larger or smaller, or even if it's just trying to keep everybody together on, like, the same vision and direction. That's all stuff that I would imagine comes up. But, could y'all talk about any lessons you might have learned along the way trying to do something like this as, like, a volunteer driven thing?
For me, and since I've been kinda doing this since 2017, with Code First Geno's. I started at, just basic developer, went up to, project lead and then to co captain for a while, for a year or two. And then now I'm director of front end engineering, so more focused. But the the volunteers are amazing people for one. To keep them motivated is the hardest thing. Motivated on the project because it's well, they have lives. I've had some that, I mean, recently where they have every reason not to go, not to contribute. They've got too much going on in their life from what they're telling us, but they're still just showing up and able to do something. They make time for it. It's really up to the volunteer to make time for it and have the love that they want to contribute back to it. To keep that motivation going is a matter of almost nagging them over Slack. That's our main form of communication is through Slack channels. And I'll just drop a message in the channel for the project. I'll just say, hey. How are people doing? That just shows that I'm making a little step towards wanting to make some progress. And from what I've seen, with volunteers is that usually motivates them to as well try to make another step and a small commitment. And that's about what it is. It's just those small commitments adding up. Those baby steps adding up, and sooner or later, you're gonna get somewhere. And for the motivation part, it's well, when we have these discussions with Monica and Baldo and really the praises, the love that we get back. It's we take our skill sets and we do what we do, and we're helping people with it. We're not just helping a company make profits or helping someone else within another project. This is affecting real people's lives. And with something that you never thought you would. I mean, when I was in high school and early college years, the only way I thought of really helping people was going to a food donating to a food bank or, feeding the homeless. And I knew after graduation, like, okay. I need to find a way to give use my skills to give back to the community. And that's how I found Code for San Jose. But for me, it's I always made time for it. And that's what I see in a lot of volunteers, is that they make time for it. They don't necessarily find time, or it doesn't come around to them. They make it. And when you just give that little bit of praise, you you always say, please and thank you. And you always be understanding and empathetic with the situation. Even if they literally tell you screw off, like, okay. Yeah. I'll back up. And they'll talk to me a few days later, and that's totally fine. The communication is what counted.
Yeah. It is a compliment. You're like one of the most gracious people that I have dealt with. Just even something as simple. I've never felt uncomfortable or stupid around you. I had issues with Slack and connecting with Slack, and I couldn't figure out all these channels. I've never used Slack before. And, Joe's like, well, I don't understand it either. I mean, just
Oh, it's terrible.
We're on the same page. I'm really terrible with it. And I work with it every day. And I'm like, oh, god. Slack. Yeah. If I have to change workspaces, like, a year ago, I was like, oh, no. How did I do that again?
Yeah. You're definitely just easygoing and very, very, very comfortable and easy to work with. That cooperation, collaboration, working with volunteers, and taking the, putting your angel wings over the project and making sure that, that it actually works in the end, man, it it's it's truly awe inspiring. And getting everybody to just chip in, for the greater good. It's it's truly amazing.
That's one of the reasons why I love it, is getting the community. Like, this is my community. These are basically my neighbors. Some of them are across the country. And, like, they're still wonderful people. I still get along with them, and I'd consider them my neighbor and the community I'm involved with. And with Code for San Jose, we're trying to go even more local to other organizations within our local community and to build these relationships because that's one thing I felt that we've missed out in the twentieth and the twenty first century is we lost our neighbors. We lost our community, and I'm trying to get a slice of that back.
So as, I think a couple of you mentioned, this has been a initiative, a a thing y'all have built together that has impacted real people's lives. So as you've as that's happened and as folks have made use of it, have you all gotten any feedback from folks that have kinda gone through the process, maybe used this this questionnaire? And if so, like, what what have you learned from that feedback?
So since we have gone virtual and we we've been doing these workshops for a while, just with the, e immigrate tool. So using actual technology, using e immigrate. And then the last two with an addition of the SIT tool. We've done over 50 workshops. Over 4,000 people had their citizenship applications filled out. So there are definite results in the community. Last, two rounds with the SIT tool, we've helped over 1,200. There were about 400 applicate. I'm sorry, three, over 300, citizenship applications were done just with this using the SIP tool alone. And we don't get to see people anymore. It's just disappointing, in a way. But at the same time, we know that this tool is helping in a very different way, that we don't have direct contact with folks. We were brave enough to do an outreach. It was the San Jose's national night out just last month, since today is what the September 1. So back in August, a couple weeks ago, we, were on our outreach mission, at, Perch Park, Emma Persh Park. And this guy shows up and starts talking to us. And he says, oh, you know, I applied for citizenship and blah blah blah. Something about the citizenship there. I was like, wait a minute. What year? He says, just now. What? I mean, completely random, person. And then he started giving us more details and that he was afraid to apply. He was ready to apply for citizenship just when COVID hit. So that was back in, 2020, in March. And then he was putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, but he wasn't sure. And finally, it took him all the way till May 2021 to just swallow the pill. And, he saw the advertisement for a citizenship day, and he used the sit tool to get screened. I wasn't exactly sure that maybe he was, talking about some other event. I still couldn't believe that we bumped into him. And then I checked the back end of the tool when I got home. I was like, oh my god. He actually did use it. I did actually assign, this person to one of the agencies, and he did complete the workshop, and he did have his application filled out and ready to go at the end of the workshop. So we know that it works, but, you know, to find these people and chase them all around town, kinda difficult. But, we've seen some really amazing results. And just yeah. It it was a long day actually on that day, and that completely made my day, to meet.
Well, he actually came towards the end of the event, so it was really funny. Things were calming down, and then we just started having a conversation with him. And then like he said and then Balder and I both looked at each other and we're like, oh my god. He actually did our workshop. And we just started dancing around going like, oh my god. Oh my god. He's one of them. It was awesome. It was absolutely awesome. So we're hoping that, you know, now we know that he's submitted his application, application, and so we're keeping an eye on when he will actually be approved. And so we wanna do a, follow-up story on him as a success story.
For the code for San Jose side, the feedback we get is from Waldo and Monica here. And, it's not just them. It's our previous customers as well or previous organizations. I keep calling them customers. Sorry. That's an old work habit. But the organizations that we've worked with in the past too, it's the appreciation and feedback that we get from the organizations. And one thing about these tools, I say tools because this isn't really the first one that we've, for Code for San Jose has built for an organization like CET. And what it's really what I see as one of the biggest benefits is the time saving aspect of how much time did we actually save these people and not only just them, but every person that used the tool as well. And every time, it's been a stack. We've been with, meal tally organization before, which that's a whole another organization, for feeding children across the nation, but we did small pilot here in San Jose. And the we saved them hours of time, and they were completely ecstatic, and they knew it. And it's just that's really what these tools and projects are meant to do. It's never meant to replace a human being. It's meant to take something that they don't like doing a lot and have to take up a whole lot of time doing and making it a little more easier and saving them a whole lot of time so they can go off and do something else better.
I imagine there might be folks out there that end up listening to this conversation. And, they might be themselves either part of an organization that might seek to partner with volunteers like the ones from Christopher San Jose, or there might be volunteers themselves that are kind of thinking about how partnership might happen with portions of their community. One thing that I think I'd like to get from each of you is, from each of your perspectives, what sort of advice would you give to any of those folks who might be seeking to do a similar sort of partnership? And say they're, like, they're at day one, and they're about to go on this journey.
Don't be scared. Don't just think outside the box. Get outside that box. Yes. There will be challenges. There'll be many unknowns, but unless you give it a try, you'll never know. You have to keep your mind open to possibilities and suggestions and just trust it. Just trust the the process. You know? Because we are in very, very good hands with Code for San Jose.
I would say the same. I mean, it just takes tremendous amount of trust. Just jump in with your heart, mind, and soul. Do not be afraid to ask questions. I mean, we we don't have answers. I mean, all of us as individuals, actually, we don't have the answers. So we are constantly learning from one another. Ask for more. I mean, I'm trying to be polite and be mindful of the work that's being done, but I'm also asking, like, hey. What's possible? Like, how far can we push this thing? Can we use it for citizenship classes? And there are certain realizations that well, wait a minute. You know, we're getting too far ahead of ourselves, maybe. It's more like a single transaction of for, like, a workshop or possibly voting or providing a certain piece of information, but not necessarily in a repetitive fashion like a citizenship class would work. So we're we're constantly thinking, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I can't emphasize the world may crash and burn, which it seems to be happening lately, in many different places around the world, but, including fires in California. But, you know, if you don't try it, you will never see what's if it's even possible. I was shaking my boots, when when we were just about ready to launch and, we had all these hiccups, these technical hiccups. I'm like, oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Is it going to work? Is it going to maybe this way. Maybe this okay. Is it is it on? Is it okay. Are the questions working? And you know what? On the end of the day, it worked. It worked. Oh
oh, but I gotta tell you, we Balu and I, we were up till, like, two or three in the morning to ensure everything was going well and going smoothly. And we when we realized the amount of numbers that we had gotten, I actually went into tears and just started going, I can't believe we did this. You did this. We did this. You know? I couldn't I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I was just, yeah, I see it in my skin. I'm I'm getting goosebumps just talking about it. That's how powerful it is.
We literally needed a small village to make this happen. If it wasn't for coders, for San Jose, if it wasn't, for our partners, if it wasn't for my boss, is it if it wasn't for our mutual understanding, it's like, hey. I will work the whole night through just to make sure that these things happen. If it wasn't for our early morning conversation with, Joey and then getting his private phone number in the middle of all this just to make sure that we have better communication and just to make things just a little bit better or quicker or or more direct communication. And that's what it took. And it took every single little bit of it, including electricity and paid Wi Fi bills. And, you know, my Wi Fi has been going out at some point in time, throughout this process too. And doing a virtual workshop and not having Wi Fi connection to the Internet. So I also have a hotspot. I mean, they're just like these backups upon backups and ideas to just make sure that that everything goes through. But at the end of the day, it worked out. And then at the same time, if it didn't work, well, then it didn't work. Unfortunately, we have to move on and but knock on wood, it it worked both times. What is it all? So, I mean, Joey's conversations with like Darren, you know, trying to put this thing together and make sure that the emails get fired off, the, the oh my god. It but it took every single strain of, like, muscle and brain and all that to to make this happen, and they did it. It's wow.
Sometimes we do it right in front of Volvo too. It'll be Darren and I setting up configuration on, like, a server on AWS screen. I can understand everything Darren's looking at. And Baldo is just like, woah. This is what? And if you had any questions, we tried to answer them. Because it's like, if if you can't explain it to a child, then you don't understand it yourself. And so, no offense to all that you're not a child, but we always strive to provide understanding and transparency. And that for anyone trying to start, these sort of relationships, it's about baby steps in communication. Communication is key. You don't have to give out your personal info, but when it's deadline time and you also want them to have that contact with you, so you can have that contact with them, it's just a matter of start the conversation. There are brigades around the nation and growing around the world. We have code for all, we have over 70 brigades across the nation, and they're all approachable on, any sort of communication platform that they have available. But you gotta start that conversation. And this is civic tech. These people are more than willing to start a new project and help you. They want these projects for the people by the people. Because as we've seen with, early health care website, it was, I think, during the Bauman administration. The first round of that website was horrible. And then they actually, the federal government reached out to and created an organization, who I cannot remember the name of, that are also they're a nonprofit. They rebuilt it, and it was all transparent. It was all open source. But starting the conversation, there's someone that wants to help you. And making those baby steps, even just showing up, even if you're tired, even if you're stressed, just sometimes you just gotta show up.
And you guys got me excited about coding.
Just Yeah. We may not teach coding, but we certainly got him excited and, for at least the understanding of how the systems are talking to one another, how they're built to one together, and then he could understand their limitations. And so when we had those discussions of, well, is this even possible? We would be like, it's probably possible, but the amount of effort that would go into it, and it's just you gotta ask the questions. You can't be afraid to ask. And to be honest, if someone is not providing a good enough answer, or is not being clear about it, that might be your first red flag of they might be losing interest, or they may not understand, or they may not be the right person to be talking to. Because, I mean, how many times, Baldo, have you talked to several contractors of trying to build the immigrate? That sort of experience is just we could have a whole another podcast just about that. So that's one key takeaway. I would tell any volunteer, any citizen, any one looking to start a project like this, is start the conversation. Reach out. Find the person. They may not be in a brigade. They may be within a company that's somewhat related to what you wanna accomplish. But you gotta start that baby step. And those baby steps will add up to take you where you wanna go, hopefully. And, hopefully, you'll have a community and, organization to go along with you as wonderful as Waldo and Monica with CET here.
As our session draws to its tail end, a bit of a tradition we have on the podcast is that we leave space at the end for folks that are on the program with us to monologue a bit, to give us an idea of the thoughts they'd like us to leave the chat thinking about. So for each of you in this conversation, what would those concluding thoughts be?
So, we are truly grateful for the opportunity to partner with Code for San Jose. With their support and dedication, we've been able to make immigration legal services accessible to those who are not tech savvy, may not speak English, be low income, and are marginalized by our society. Funding for legal service providers has always been scarce and underfunded. And although we have a new administration who is immigrant friendly, the need for our services are only increasing. Organizations are being stretched thin, and some are hitting that breaking point. Technology is helping us process a higher volume of people, and it's make and it's taking the load off of nonprofit staff. We want funders to take notice of what we've been able to accomplish during this pandemic with little or no funding and invest in our organization so we can continue to support those who need our services. So thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. We really do appreciate it.
Well, I can't thank, Code for San Jose enough, for all the amazing work that they have done and including Joey and the whole team. There are just so so many names, to mention, and I've mentioned them throughout the podcast. Good old Darren, Adriana, Annie. I mean, so many, Gina also, and Gina has joined the, SIT team not all that long ago, but, she's already made some headway, and we're heading in this better direction. What I really want to impart with, with everyone is that and it's something that keeps sitting in my head, all the time is I keep seeing our community members, and in so many ways, they are helpless. And technology and employing technology to do some of the work, it creates this I think the word is digital divide between them and the services that we are providing. So the technologies that that ought to be creative and ought to be considered, it has to meet them at their level. Period. If there is a for if it is a website, for example, it has to be very straightforward. There really shouldn't be any guessing around of where to find things, for example. We have we have a phone registration line, and good portion of well, for our community members, we also did some research and it was 99% of the people had smartphones, but very few, if any, use the actual browser on them. People are more keen about using WhatsApp and texting rather than going online and searching for, for services. So we're thinking of different delivery, systems. You know, why can't why does it have to be a website or why does it have to be that someone needs to find the website through the browser? Can it be delivered to them via text? Making technology as easy and accessible to those who don't necessarily understand it. Perfect example, my parents might as well plug them in while they're, well, we're all immigrants. Anyhow, they have difficult time understanding technology, even as simple of a thing as the VCR days and, and the DVD player and just finding the play button, being also from a different country, never having own a DVD player. Me showing them, and we're constantly wrestling with the smartphones. My dad keeps doing updates and things keep disappearing and he keeps calling me. So these technologies have to be as simple as possible. About our agencies, it's a cliche, overworked and underpaid, but it's not really about that. We just it's and I think this would be the case for just about any nonprofit. There aren't enough people around. There's just so much work to be done. We're not necessarily skilled and polished in every single way and area, especially also with technology. We don't have the time to understand because we're busy with something else. There are just we end up wearing so many hats. That's another thing that keeps happening with the nonprofits. You know, your job description just basically goes out the window because there are just so many other things that need to be attended to. To understand technology, to learn it, to being able to deploy it in a workshop just like, for example, SIP tool or, the e immigrate. There is a data collector portion, and we deploy it right at the workshop and volunteers that never seen this tool before well they need to get it right then and there to be able to enter data. We don't have the time to sit around and go, oh, well, let me show you how this works. It's like, here you go. Here's the tablet and just press that button, enter this number, and just answer the questions, and press submit at the end. It really needs to be and technologies do need to be that simple, that easy to understand and comprehend, where it can be comprehend it can the technology can be understood on the fly. And it has been an amazing experience overall. I love the I love the love, from Code for San Jose, Code for America, and everybody that's been involved in the project. We're utterly grateful, and the results definitely show, and we hope for more. And thank you for your invitation to this podcast. Thank you, Ryan.
I'll elaborate on one on a couple of things that Valdo was saying about the technology needs to meet the organization in a simple way. We didn't just start off with, thinking, alright. We're gonna build this from scratch. We tried to use, existing tools. One is, I won't name drop them, and they're great. But we used I think it was a marketing tool. We used probably one one hundredth fraction of their services in the beginning to, basically allow, take a questionnaire, take a survey, and have it go out to be that simple. And the technology kind of met the organization, but then there was a bill that they well, it would be a struggle to meet on a yearly basis. And so it became like, alright. We use this a very, very small portion of this overall huge platform, and we're still getting dinged, like, this much. And so that's when we decided, like, well, we can do this. We just need the time frame. And so version one, which was the September 2020 verse version when the deadline kept getting cut in half was when we had to use the the library that we chose. And it was simple, and we felt it did meet the criteria. But over time, it would very put another stress that the organization would have to that Volvo and Monica would have to deal with. And so we met them with, alright. We can do this. We can build basically what they have. And as long as in a way we don't build these sets of features that they have, then it's doable because this would take a whole another year to build. And it's having that discussion, having that compromise that we met with Volvo, and we found their simple means. And then we constructed it from there. Because at that point, we had the questionnaire figured out for the the citizen to take, it was at that point, how does Volvo and their team want to use this application? And so that's when we met them with, okay. We need to simplify, and we need to make this better for not only the citizen, but for Valdo and his team. For a last remark, the the reward for this kind of work is you get goosebumps all over, then it's just there's nothing that you can really hold from it. But the relationships, the the work, the amount that you can learn from it, and the amount that you can grow is truly a reward beyond what, well, most jobs can provide. But that's definitely a a closing remark I would put into this is the love that you get back from it and the joy and the accomplishments and just the people that you help. I mean, how can you describe that?
There's so many lives that we are changing for the better. And truly, we're making a difference in so many lives by the work that you guys are doing or helping us with.
Yeah. And you just you don't even realize it. You just in my opinion, it's been taking baby steps, and all of a sudden, we're here. And we're having this discussion on a great podcast and have helped thousands of people in many different projects, and we're gonna continue to do so. And not just with Valdo and his team. We've got, police accountability coming up with the police data trust application where I'm working with Code for Boston across multiple brigades for holding police accountable. So it's it's the reward from all of this and the fact that it's code for the people, by the people, for the love of the people. So, yeah, thanks, Ryan, for this invitation on the podcast.
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