Honorable Mentions

  • Asylum Access leadership staff from Ecuador, Thailand, Tanzania and San Francisco gathered in Geneva, Switzerland to attend the UNHCR Annual Consultations with NGOs.
  • Asylum Access Executive Director Emily Arnold-Fernández was profiled by the San Francisco Examiner’s Credo column.
  • Asylum Access Tanzania formed a coalition of human rights organizations to advocate for improved rights for refugees in Tanzania.
  • After the success of its first workshop last year, Asylum Access Tanzania began biweekly Know Your Rights workshops in May.  To date, 190 refugees have learned about their rights and options in Tanzania.
  • Asylum Access Thailand, together with partner NGOs, successfully advocated for the release of 96 Pakistani Ahmadi refugees and asylum seekers from immigration detention, the first mass release of refugees in Thailand.
  • VLA Ashley Connell collaborated with Gladys Montaluisa, an Ecuadorian attorney with extensive experience in labor law, to conduct Asylum Access Ecuador’s first ever labor mediation session between a client and his former employer. This allowed a Nigerian refugee applicant to confront his former employer and resulted in his receiving full payment for work he performed almost one year ago.
  • VLA Nina Kessler held Asylum Access Ecuador’s first “Healthy Community” workshop for refugees to share stories, skills, and strategies for living in Ecuador.
  • Asylum Access launched a Right to Work Campaign on World Refugee Day 2011.
  • Asylum Access’s 6th Annual Summer Soiree in San Francisco was a huge success!