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The Board of the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program has selected mentors (curators) to help teams from Kyrgyzstan, Northern Macedonia, Sierra Leone and Ukraine implement their ideas. Let us introduce mentors’ team to you In December, participants of the KyivLEPP-2021 developed projects to improve access to justice in their countries. Five prototype solutions have withstood criticism from legal crash-test experts and demonstrated their viability. They were developed by teams from Kyrgyzstan, Northern Macedonia, Sierra Leone and Ukraine. All these teams will receive not only financial support, but also the support of experienced mentors who will help them to implement their

Legal problems in Africa and Ukraine, in the Balkans and Central Asia – we all are “sitting in the same boat”.   This year, 7 teams from Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Northern Macedonia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sierra Leone took part in KyivLEPP design-sprint of their ideas how to solve legal problems. During the week, participants of the KyivLEPP-2021 Idea Incubator developed projects aimed at improving access to justice in their countries. They immersed themselves into existing problems, identified target groups, focused, analyzed alternative problem-solving ideas, developed models of solutions and crash-tested them. 5  teams have successfully passed the crash test. They were developed

This year the design sprint of the KyivLEPP-2021 will be moderated by the first organizer of the sprint in Ukraine using the Google Ventures method, design strategist Oksana Hoshva. About the moderator Oksana Hoshva has shown in her own experience what can be achieved when you can generate ideas, create a clear plan of action and put them into practice. At the age of 21 she was entrusted with PR work with the well-known Ukrainian band Okean Elzy, and at the age of 23 she opened a PR agency herself. Oksana now owns DOT_DOT Innovation and Hoshva PR & DGTL.

Who will help the teams to develop their ideas? Inclusive justice 7 teams from Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sierra Leone will participate in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program this year. The main topic for this year is “The role of (non)lawyers in the inclusive justice ecosystem”. “Non” here is in a parenthesis, because we are interested in paralegals, social workers, legal tech, and legal practitioners as well, – Kateryna Yeroshenko, the coordinator of the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program clarified. We are focusing on addressing public health and social issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we

What legal issues would the teams address during the KyivLEPP-2021? 16 different teams from Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Togo, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Ghana and Kyrgyzstan applied to the Kyiv Practical Legal Capacity Building Program (KyivLEPP-2021) this year. During the last three weeks, program experts conducted video interviews with applicants.  Interviews were dedicated to clarifying the legal problems the teams have addressed to KyivLEPP, to discussing what makes teams’ ideas innnovative or people-centered.  Institutional and intersectoral balance of the group, coherence, motivation, clear formulation of the problem, vision of alternative strategies, gender balance – all of these were among the

What justice problems organizations-applicants addressed to Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Programme this year?  What are the eligibility criteria for the participants? The call for participation in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program (KyivLEPP-2021) was closed last week. 15 teams submitted their applications this year! NGOs, law firms and government agencies from Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Togo, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Northern Macedonia and Kyrgyzstan. Despite the remoteness of our countries we’re all on the same page: the legal needs are very similar from country to country. There is a problem with citizenship documentation in Kenya, the Tanzanian team wants to overcome gender

Who can participate? How KyivLEPP helps to develop solutions for problems in access to justice? For the third year in a row, the program announces recruitment of ideas for teams from different countries. The key criterion for selecting a team is a detailed innovative idea aimed at solving a legal problem relevant to the applicant country.  After a five-day incubation of the idea through a design thinking methodology and a crash test of prototype ideas, the teams will come up with ready-made solutions. Those teams who successfully passed the crash-test will receive modest grants for their idea implementation, and mentorship

Participants of the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program (KyivLEPP) have developed projects aimed to improve access to justice in five countries. We tell in the digest what we together with colleagues from Ukraine, Poland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Northern Macedonia managed to make as a result of half a year. KyivLEPP provides an opportunity for joint intellectual work to experts in the field of access to justice from different countries. The goal of the Program is to find and pilot viable, innovative and people-centric practical solutions in the field of access to justice, in accordance with the national contexts. For the second

The Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine and the Polish Legal Clinics Foundation have implemented a project to strengthen access to justice. Organizations have jointly developed an International Communication Platform for Students, Teachers and Clients of Legal Clinics. The project was supported by KyivLEPP — Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program, an incubator of innovative ideas in the field of access to justice in Ukraine and the world. We have prepared a scheme for you to better understand who are the participants of the project. The purpose of the platform: legal assistance to clients. Ukrainians living in Poland and Polish living

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from North Macedonia has completed its plan to create a mobile paralegal office. What will it be like and when it starts working? In North Macedonia, it is extremely difficult to provide legal assistance to residents of outlying villages (above all, we are talking about the municipalities of Prilep, Krivogaštani and Dolneni). In some cases, specialists have to travel hundreds of kilometers off-road several times a day. Telephone and online services existing in the country facilitate their work, however, all the issues are not solved, since a number of cases

The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program from Kyrgyzstan has completed its plan to create a network of paralegals for victims of gender-based violence. What is planned to be done for its implementation? According to the Ministry of the Interior of Kyrgyzstan, the number of domestic violence cases in the country is increasing every year. From 2012 to 2015, between 2,500 and 3,500 facts were registered. In 2016-2018, this index did not fall below 7000. And in 2020, it exceeded 9,000 cases. The real suffering of people hides behind all these figures. Imagine a man pushing a