When I began as the only farmworker attorney at Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, the statewide program was under audit by its sole funder for underperformance. Within four years, I increased the program's client caseload by 400% -- in line with other state programs of the same size.
I launched several new initiatives to better serve Virginia's migrant farmworkers:
· Fought labor and sex trafficking by launching education programs teaching both farmworkers and community service providers to recognize the signs of human trafficking.
· Began representing the program’s first women farmworker clients after a sustained outreach effort, including the creation of a domestic violence prevention program called Healthy Families.
· Diversified our client base to include speakers of Haitian Creole and indigenous Latin American languages, increasing the percentage of non-Spanish-speaking clients from 3% to 10% in four years.