| Appleseed organizes, supports, and connects the organization’s local Appleseed Centers. Together these centers and the national office form a comprehensive legal advocacy network striving to build a just and fair civil society. Appleseed efforts bear fruit. The hundreds of accomplishments logged by Appleseed’s centers have had a deep and lasting impact on the communities they serve and on national policy. What follows is just a brief sampling of some of Appleseed’s most impressive recent accomplishments. Use the anchor links to navigate. |
| Alabama |
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Immigrant Policy: As leader of the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Alabama Appleseed coordinated and expanded the only unified statewide voice for Hispanic immigrants in the state, monitoring anti-immigrant legislative bills in the state legislature and preventing their passage. The Center also developed and distributed in the Hispanic communities around the state a "Know Your Rights" brochure (in Spanish) for immigrants. It also developed in the later part of 2008 a billboard "Welcoming Campaign," which resulted in the placement of welcoming billboard messages on 25 billboards in 11 Alabama counties in February 2009.
Health Insurance Coverage: The Center compiled data and statistics on Alabama's uninsured population and created a list of Alabama health care/advocacy organizations; released a report containing five separate studies, each conducted by a unique team of volunteer health care attorneys from Birmingham, analyzing five remedial options to address the state’s health access crisis; and assisted in the organization of a state-wide Health Access/Health Care Conference to be held in Birmingham in February 2009.
Protecting Homeownership: Over the past year, the Center has developed a presentation on heir property issues and delivered it in 37 Alabama counties; organized and coordinated a pro bono effort by two major Birmingham law firms to research and develop a training manual on how to handle heir property cases and document the volume and value of heir property in several counties; secured the commitment of the Young Lawyers Section of the Alabama State Bar to work with Appleseed to develop a pro bono network of lawyers throughout the state to handle heir property cases; and continued to interface with and attend the national meetings of the National Conference of Uniform State Law Commissioners as an independent observer, in order to help formulate state-level law reforms on heir property issues for the Appleseed network.
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| Chicago |
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Criminal Justice: Chicgo Appleseed provided the impetus for the following improvemnts in the Cook County criminal justice system:
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Eliminating videoconferencing in bond court and converting to in-person hearings; |
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Implementing a pretrial services program in bond court, allowing judges to make informed decisions and thereby reducing the number of people held in jail pending trial; |
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Prompting the appointment of five additional judges, thereby allowing the creation of diversion prorams; and |
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Maintaining a court-watching program and ongoing problem-solving meetings with major stakeholders in the criminal division. |
Financial Education and Consumer Rights: Chicago Appleseed prepared and distributed brochures and other materials on how immigrant families can better afford higher education and on where consumers can go for help if they feel they have been defrauded.
Parent Involvement: The Chicago Center has drafted and distributed a parent involvement advocacy toolkit for schools, parents and community organizations. It has implemented training programs to help schools and districts implement the Chicago Appleseed partnership model and provided technical assistance and policy analysis to the Illinois Governor's Parent Leadership Council. In May 2009, the Center held an Illinois NCLB Parent Involvement Policy Summit.
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