Julie Schwietert Collazo

As photos and videos of asylum-seeking children separated from their families began to be dispersed by mainstream media in the summer of 2018, former social worker Julie Schwietert Collazo asked herself, “What can I do?”. After hearing the attorney for one migrant mother explain on the radio that the mother could be reunited with her children if she could pay her immigration bond, Julie and her husband, an Afro-Cuban refugee, launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised the bond money – and more – in less than 12 hours and more than $1 million in six months.

What started as an effort to reunite one mother with her three children became a movement that, five years later, has resulted in more than $3 million raised, 130 parents and guardians reunited with their children, and hundreds of asylum seekers supported through border and detention intervention programs – all achieved by mobilizing "ordinary" people and resources to ignite and nurture extraordinary change.

In this talk, Julie will share the story of Immigrant Families Together and how its journey and the lessons she’s learned can be appropriated and replicated to achieve profound, meaningful change in a variety of contexts. By claiming our personal power and exercising our resources – however limited we may think these are – we can mobilize our communities to solve problems and create environments for collective flourishing.