Educational-Legal Partnership (ELP)🎒

NJCIC's educational-legal partnership (ELP) launched in October 2024 with the Jersey City Public School District.

William L. Dickinson High School (Dickinson) serves as our host school and partner in providing integrative care and support for young immigrants across our respective and allied sectors of education and law. This initiative is a testament to the power of collaboration, helping to close a critical legal representation gap for Jersey City's immigrant students. Additionally, our ELP is an important extension of the school-based outreach that has been vital to the success of our community engagement initiatives centered on building the self-advocacy skills of young immigrants and their support networks through access to tailored, language-specific, actionable information. 

An unresolved, looming legal status is an undeniable stressor for young immigrants, impacting their academic performance, physical health, and mental well-being and often denying them the agency to pursue common life goals like meaningful employment and higher education. Our ELP allows our Legal Team to address immigration status as a social determinant of opportunities and outcomes across education and its related social mobility. Project Achieve ensures that we meet young immigrants where they are in safe and established spaces, build trust, remain responsive, and work alongside young immigrants' school-based support network to realize their fullest potential, starting with their immigration status.   

Immigrant students in Jersey City represent an incredible diversity of countries of origin and languages, including those who recently arrived and are new to New Jersey and those who have called Garden State home from a tender age. Project Achieve offers a range of services to meet the diverse needs of these students, including:   

  • Direct legal representation for students in applications for asylum, SIJS, immigration court, or other humanitarian relief options, and;   

  • Know-Your-Rights presentations and access to actionable, language-specific information about essential rights and available immigration relief to build knowledge and self-advocacy skills of impacted youth and other stakeholders, and;   

  • Personalized legal advice on-site for young immigrants.