YALLA VOTE ‘08 Our Voice. Our Future.

The Yalla Vote campaign is truly grateful to all of the sponsoring organizations that endorse it, and lend support. Recently, a Yalla Vote volunteer named Thomas Zraick paid a visit to one of our endorsers, the American Mideast Leadership Network at their Astoria office. The occasion was a pair of workshops for Arab Americans looking for help getting their resumes together, and making some networking connections. A number of the attendees were recent immigrants, and Yalla Vote was there stressing the importance of civic engagement and voting in the upcoming election. The event was very successful, and allowed for some great collaboration between the AMLN and Yalla Vote in building a strong and prosperous Arab American community. It’s always gratifying to see a Yalla Vote representative getting hands on with the community, but it’s even better when it’s one of our volunteers…and it’s EVEN BETTER when it’s a volunteer representing Yalla Vote in conjunction with one of our amazing sponsoring organizations. Bravo all around.

Yalla Vote field interns visit the DNC…

…and the RNC…

… and our nation’s Capital.

To see more photos of their Washington adventure, please visit our Flickr photostream.

AAI is proud to introduce the Yalla Vote Field Organizers. For information about these amazing young men and women, and how to contact them, please visit the Field Organizers page here at Yalla Vote.
Hassan, our Field Organizer in Michigan, gives us an update:

Yesterday, the staff here at the AAI Michigan Field Office had the great honor of meeting with a delegation of visiting Arab and Turkish community leaders and activists from Germany. The German guests were visiting our community on a tour with the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). The IVLP is an exchange program run designed to build professional connections between communities in the U.S. and leaders abroad. Past alumni of the IVLP program include over 200 past and current heads of state, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Read the rest of this entry »

You might have read our recent post about the Yalla Vote training in Michigan that kicked off the month of May with a weekend of voter engagement training for Yalla Vote endorsers and activists.

If you would like another glimpse of this training from a slightly different perspective, take a look at the Wellstone Action website’s write-up of this information packed few days.

The feedback we’ve received from participants is overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The only complaint?

Not long enough!

While space in these training sessions is extremely limited and open only to endorsing organizations and activists, we hope you will benefit from these sessions, even if you cannot attend. Those who attend the training are charged with returning to their communities and, in their own turn, teaching what they have learned to the greater Arab American family back home.

With your help, we can change the course of American politics and make our thoughts, our needs, our hopes, our fears–and our wisdom– a vibrant part of the national dialogue. Don’t forget to sign the petition, register to vote, and help others do the same.

Michigan field office intern Sarah Jaward did a wonderful job summarizing the Wellstone training sessions that took place the first weekend of April. Below are some excerpts from her report:

AAI Voter Engagement Training

On Friday April 4th through Saturday the 5th the Arab American Institute-Midwest office hosted its first ever Voter Engagement Training, featuring the Wellstone Action Fund. The aim of this initiative was to provide political training and leadership development with the expectation that the skills attainted by the attendees would be implemented back to their communities, helping to mobilize social change within the United States for the Arab American population as a whole.

Read the rest of this entry »