I am a Strategy Specialist with the Open Society Foundations’ Legal Empowerment Shared Framework (LE SF), based in New York.

The LE SF aims to institutionalize and financially secure systems offering nationwide and/or population-specific community-based justice services for people who are poor and marginalized in eleven low-, middle-, and high-income countries.

Two OSF thematic programs (the Public Health Program and Justice Initiative) and 11 country foundations are participating in this 4-year initiative. The countries are Indonesia, Kenya (as of 2018), Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Ukraine and the United States. By working together, the OSF participant programs and partners share experiences and methods with each other on a regular basis to encourage emulation of promising models or approaches.

I hope to use the Global Legal Empowerment Network to share news from the LE SF, to learn about updates in the legal empowerment space, and to engage with other members on their initiatives, successes, and challenges.