Giving Compass' Take:

• The Atlantic interviews Cristina Jiménez, a former undocumented worker who became a MacArthur Fellow and started a nonprofit that helps immigrant youth find their voice.

• With so much political volatility on the status of DACA, how will grassroots organizations like Jiménez's gain traction? One important focus will be in the area of education, where funders and policymakers can have influence over Dreamers' access to higher ed opportunities.

• How much does it cost to exclude undocumented students? This article reveals the numbers you should know.

When Cristina Jiménez was 13 years old, her family moved to the United States from Ecuador. Three years later, her peers started getting jobs at the mall. But Jiménez was undocumented; that was not an option for her. She opted instead to babysit and work as a “helper” to a social worker in her apartment building.

I recently talked with Jiménez, who is now the cofounder and president of United We Dream — a nonprofit that organizes immigrant-youth-led activism — and, at 33, the youngest of the MacArthur Fellows named last year. Immigration has been a hot-button issue during the Trump Administration; the president decided last September to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, and Congress has not passed the hoped-for Dream Act legislation to reestablish legal status for so-called Dreamers. Jiménez and I spoke about her own immigration status, her parents’ career aspirations for her, and what happens when the boundaries between work and life blur.

"When I was growing up undocumented, my family struggled a lot to pay for school because I didn’t have financial aid or support to go to school. It was a family effort to pay for college. My mom, myself working, and my dad — all of us pitching in for my tuition ...

"I just think [being undocumented] becomes more real once you become eligible to work, in terms of age, and some of your friends in high school are working or trying to land a job at the mall, and you just can’t, which is where I really felt it. And also because I wanted to figure out ways in which I could go to college. I realized that I couldn’t get any support, which was a surprise for me ...

"I think of myself when I was really fearful and ashamed of my status and I wouldn’t talk to anyone about it. And then I moved from this place of shame and fear to feeling empowered. And now I’m part of creating that experience for other young people and their families."

Read the full interview with Cristina Jiménez about her youth-driven immigrant activism work by Lolade Fadulu at The Atlantic.