The team participating in the Kyiv Legal Empowerment Practical Program (KyivLEPP-2020) from Ukraine and Poland began to implement its plan to create a cross-border interactive IT platform for legal clinics.
It is quite difficult to calculate the exact number of our migrant workers in Poland. According to the State Statistics Service, during 2015-2017, approximately 1.3 million people left our country, most of them to Poland, Russia and Italy. Many of them work illegally, as it is difficult for them to understand all the intricacies of employment abroad. And if a person gets injured in the workplace, such a person would be afraid to contact the police and even more so to sue an employer to have not provided safe working conditions. As a result, the victim also has to get into debt to cover the treatment abroad.
In order for our citizens, as well as Polish citizens who come to Ukraine, to receive the necessary legal assistance on employment matters, crossing the border, family, tax and other cases, the team of the two countries has set itself an ambitious goal – to unite the efforts of students and teachers of legal clinics in Ukraine and Poland, as well as to involve legal specialists in this cooperation. They found a solution for this while studying at KyivLEPP-2020, namely, to create a cross-border interactive IT platform to unite legal clinics of the two countries. It will contain a database of cases, educational content, the entertainment sector (contests, movies, games), etc. The system is to allow you to exchange data between legal clinics, cooperate in real-time, share, comment and distribute tasks. Thus, the platform would help to train many specialists understanding the laws of a neighbouring state and, if necessary, may help our citizens there, for example, to write a statement of claim to court.
Based on the ideas received during KyivLEPP, the team-team with the support of its curator from the School Vitalii Okhrimenko has already completed an action plan to create this platform. Now the idea is being actively implemented.
To begin with, the plan covers the development of a prototype that will include the best examples of IT platforms from Ukrainian and Polish legal clinics. Next, a survey will be conducted among students and teachers, they will evaluate the prototypes and express their opinion on additional useful functionality. Next, the functionality will be implemented and tested. After that, the rules for joining the resource and working in its system will be prescribed for users. According to the plan, a mass advertising campaign to promote the platform is to begin in June.
The program is implemented by the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge on Access to Justice through the joint creation of colleagues from the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation, the Coordination Center for Legal Aid Provision, the Legal Development Network, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, the Law Club PRAVOKATOR. Kyiv and with the expert and financial support of the Human Rights and Justice Program of the International Renaissance Foundation.