I’m pleased to announce that veteran strategist and organizer Folabi Olagbaju, a colleague I know from previous human rights work, has joined LIRS in the newly created post of National Mobilization Manager.
He will be responsible for driving LIRS’s grassroots efforts to advance constituent education, running high-priority advocacy campaigns, and developing innovative strategies to engage Lutherans, migrants, refugees, and partner organizations in advocacy work.
Folabi’s work will be key to advancing LIRS’s national leadership in advocating on behalf of refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, immigrants in detention, families fractured by migration and other vulnerable populations, and for lifting up the services to migrants provided by LIRS’s 60 grassroots legal and social service partners across the United States. He has already had a strong impact through his energetic work to ensure the success of the Maryland DREAM Act.
He will be working within the Mission Advancement department, which leads LIRS’s strategic communications, outreach, advocacy, and resource development. Department staff engage and equip supporters, advocates, donors, foundations, corporations and congregations as champions of welcome.
He brings to LIRS his demonstrated grassroots mobilization credentials, great passion for the work, and strong leadership experience within the broad social justice movement. He comes to LIRS after many years in various leadership positions within Amnesty International USA. From 2003-2012, he was Amnesty’s Director of the Mid-Atlantic Region, where he led the organization’s grassroots campaigning and advocacy efforts in six states. Before that, he was the Director of the organization’s Just Earth! Program (1999-2003), a cutting –edge global environmental and human rights campaign organized in partnership with the Sierra Club. Prior to his time at Amnesty International USA, Folabi was a Research Organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where he helped developed strategic national organizing campaigns for low wage, recent immigrant workers.
Folabi is an immigrant from Nigeria and holds a doctorate in political science and public policy from The George Washington University.
I’m excited to welcome Folabi in his new role, and I’m grateful for his work to stand for welcoming immigrants and refugees!