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Over three years, 226 people took courses of the Public Advisors Program, of which 63 received certificates at the end of last week. On this occasion, we learned from the Chairman of the Association of Public Advisors of Ukraine Anatolii Levchuk and the coordinator of the training of the eighth set of public advisers Hanna Ilaschuk, how much the learning process has changed since 2017, what has been achieved by advisers during this time. From advocacy to gender-oriented budgeting In Canada and Moldova, as well as in several other countries, there is a network of paralegals who are competent in

In Ukraine, in regional centers and large cities, it is easy to access professional legal and social assistance, while many communities do not have free access to such specialists – remote mountain villages, small settlements, vulnerable/closed communities, etc. However, there are public advisers who, although they do not solve complex legal issues, do not represent clients in courts, cannot replace a professional lawyer or social worker, but understand legal issues, and know where to redirect a person to solve the problem. Within the framework of the “Public Advisors” program of the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge, the Ukrainian Legal Aid

Why the Ukrainians still often prefer corruptive ways to solve their problems? This phenomenon has some fundamental reasons: cultural traditions and the Soviet legacy to social behaviour belief that justice is always costly wish to solve the issue as soon as possible and effortlessly But the most common is the reason which in our overloaded with information time seems to be odd: ignorance of own rights and available opportunities to protect the same. Just a minor share of the population may say for sure where they can get legal advice, where they can be assisted with writing application or claim,

Now, over 140 community advisers can be counted all over Ukraine. And another 95 can join them by early next year. Just as many as that were selected among the most active residents of various regions of the country to take a special training program. Training for advisers to-be will start this week and take three months.  They will learn how to better understand people’s problems and where to look for assistance to solve them out, how self-government works, what tools for influencing authorities are available, how the budgeting is effected and many other things. Training is given by the

Since the very first days of the coronavirus spread, the community advisers have been facilitating elimination of consequences and prevention of the spread of COVID-19 in the Ukrainian communities. Thus, according to the survey conducted by the Ukrainian paralegals in 16 regions of Ukraine, as of the beginning of April 2020, the most common legal inquiries regarding the recovery of rights violated as a result of the spread of COVID-19 were as follows: Violation of the labour laws (dismissal of employees, non-payment of wages, involuntary unpaid leaves); Violation of the patients’ rights (medical facilities refuse to render services to the sick; it is difficult

The survey has been conducted by the monitoring group made of the members of the community and involved 92 community advisers. Thus, according to the survey findings, the main requests for training and advanced trainings among the advisers are: Mediation and Recovery Practices; Project Management, Grant Writing; Facilitation; Decentralisation, Activities of the Local Authorities and Amalgamated Territorial Communities, Development of Communities, Educational and Health Care Reforms; Training and Coaching; NGO Development, Strategic Planning and Organisational Development; Public Speeches, Eloquence Training; Anti-Violence; Data Collection and Analysis, Visualisation, Monitoring Skills; Information Security, Counteraction to Manipulations, Black Rhetoric; Team Building. As a reminder,

The educational programme for the community advisers has been developed by the practical experts, including:  Practitioners from the free legal aid system; Representatives of the non-government organisations providing the legal aid and human rights defence NGOs; Care workers and gender and anti-discrimination experts; Mentors of the legal clinics. The programme has been developed with account of the international experience in paralegal training and understanding of the strategic role of the community advisers: facilitation of the community and integration of services in the community. The training programme includes there modules dedicated to different themes and supplementing each other. The last three

Anatolii Levchuk, the community adviser and participant of the educational visit of the Ukrainian delegation to Canada in spring 2019, has told about the special aspects of operations of the legal clinics in Canada. – Anatolii, could you please briefly describe the trip? Why were you focused on the legal clinics? The trip was a part of the project “Accessibly and High-Quality Legal Aid in Ukraine”. It has existed since 2014, and its purpose is to improve the equal access to justice for the Ukrainians and to increase the level of public awareness of the rights to free legal aid.

The challenges faced by the community advisers, partnership support from the non-government organisations, ways of cooperation with the government and non-government legal aid providers were discussed.  The discussion was joined by the representatives of the donor organisations, the Coordination Centre for Legal Aid and the non-government organisations as well as community advisers themselves. The discussion was moderated by Iryna Slavinska.  “A community adviser is the guide into the world of law, the world of governmental services for the people who frequently ignore such services. People often settle their legal issues with their friends’ and acquaintances’ help. Thus, development of the articulated

On 28 November 2018, the International Conference “Community Advisers in Ukraine” was held in Kyiv at Unit City. It was attended by the Ukrainian and international legal experts, representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the free legal aid system as well as first Ukrainian community advisers. In many countries of the world, community advisers (or paralegals, as they are most often called abroad) render “emergency” legal aid to residents of their communities: they give advice, furnish legal information and forward people to specialized lawyers.  “We have conducted the survey and asked the citizens who they turn to most often