What’s It Like to Volunteer at AFIRE?
By Myles Ma, AFIRE Volunteer
My partner gave me a homework assignment when we moved to Chicago from Durham in July: make friends. In Durham, I had made almost none in four years.
Soon after we settled, I looked up Filipino volunteer organizations in the city, and AFIRE was the top result. I filled out the volunteer form, and Rachel Lyons, then the interim executive director, connected me with the group. I attended my first event and was quickly roped in.
Since then, I’ve volunteered at every citizenship workshop I could attend. These workshops are where members of the community, including many Filipino-Americans, bring their paperwork and meet with lawyers to assess their path to naturalization.
As a non-lawyer volunteer, my job is to keep things moving: greeting people at the door, making copies of passports, and making sure the right documents get to the right people. At my first workshop, I ruled over the copy machine with Mae Viado, a fellow volunteer who found their way to AFIRE after their dad went through the citizenship workshop years ago. It was hectic and fast-paced, but we were motivated by a desire to help our community.
I started volunteering with AFIRE before I got a job working in immigration law this past December. I’ve come to know precisely how arcane and arbitrary and cruel this process can be. Getting to ease it, even a little—especially for people who look like me and have stories like my family’s—means more than I can say.
This is especially true in this current political moment. Fellow volunteer Sam Schubert, who came to AFIRE through a Tagalog class and has since become a veteran at the citizenship workshops, put it like this: “I wanted to do something to show both solidarity and support for people going through this process.”
If you’re thinking of volunteering, there are few barriers to entry: Fill out this form and you’ll get a chance. Everyone is really freakin’ nice and welcoming and there are plenty of ways to contribute. Mae has translated scripts into Tagalog and joined AFIRE’s organizing committee. Sam has helped at Mabuhay meetings and tabled at the night market at Oakton College. I led a writing workshop at Piyesta sa Pamayanan. If you have time to give, I suspect they could use it and would really appreciate it!
