Dear Friend,
 

I’m writing to share the happy news, that ¡Reclamo!, our digital tool to combat wage theft, was selected as a winner of this year.s J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize! Selected from a pool of more than 3,200 applications, Pro Bono Net's Justicia Lab was chosen as 1 of 10 organizations with the potential to make a significant, lasting impact on America’s most pressing challenges.

“The ¡Reclamo! app offers a widely accessible way to protect vulnerable workers, particularly the undocumented, from being exploited by their employers,” said Justin Goldbach, J.M.K. Innovation Prize Program Director. “Like their fellow J.M.K. Innovation Prize awardees, they’re poised to reshape our world to be more equitable and just. We are thrilled to support them on that journey over the coming years.” 

The J.M.K. Innovation Prize is designed to support nonprofits and entrepreneurs tackling America’s most pressing challenges through social and environmental innovation—focusing in particular on pilot projects, new organizations, or nascent initiatives that involve a certain amount of measured risk, but which may ultimately lead to large-scale, transformative results.

Created by Justicia Lab at Pro Bono Net, in collaboration with workplace justice advocates in New York City, ¡Reclamo! (“Reclaim” in Spanish) provides an innovative, accessible alternative. With minimal training, this digital legal tool enables immigrants and their non-lawyer supporters to automate and simplify the wage theft filing process. The app helps workers understand and assess their risk for wage theft remotely, initiate the wage recovery process, and identify opportunities for workplace organizing. In addition, ¡Reclamo! collects aggregated data from users that will eventually be shared with and analyzed by immigrant justice nonprofits to help develop strategic enforcement solutions and legislative reforms. Reclamo! was featured in the MIT Technology Review, NPR's Marketplace, Fast Company, Next City, and The Guardian

Read the full press release and learn more about the future of our workplace justice project here.

With Gratitude,
Rodrigo Camarena

About Justicia Lab

Justicia Lab is Pro Bono Net’s immigrant justice technology lab, and a nonprofit legal tech initiative whose mission is to transform immigrant justice through collaboration, creativity, and technology. We work hand in hand with immigrants and their advocates to identify common challenges and incubate scalable digital tools to advance help immigrants navigate our immigration system, find workplace justice, and more.