ADVOCACY

At NAFSA’s Advocacy Day, an annual event held in Washington DC, speak out for students, scholars, and policies that matter to you!

After a day of training and strategizing, you will head to Capitol Hill with all the tools you need to educate Congress on how international education impacts your state and district and why we need a more globally engaged and welcoming United States.

Personal meetings will be scheduled for you with your elected officials and their staff in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Please note that space is limited.

Source: NAFSA.

By the WAIE Leadership Team

As Wisconsin has been identified as a target state for advocacy for international education, our efforts as international educators are now more critical than ever.

In July 2019, NAFSA’s Advocacy Team members, Bonnie Bissonette and Mark Farmer, along with Emlyn Torres (Region V Advocacy Coordinator), facilitated a What’s Up, Wisconsin? (WUW) call that focused on the importance of advocacy from all of us, all year long.

Emlyn and Bonnie helped us think about how we walk the fine line of being advocates, but not getting political, especially when we think about our institutions and not speaking on behalf of them if we are not empowered to do so. We also talked about the importance of pushing our representatives in government to do things like sponsor bills, make floor speeches and tweet about our issues. We need to be the “local messengers.” We need to follow up with them, too, when they do talk about our issues.