Human Rights Brigades at University of Illinois

Start Date: May 26, 2013 1:00 PM
End Date: Jun 1, 2013 4:00 PM

Human Rights Brigades volunteers work with Panamanian lawyers to provide pro-bono legal consulting through a 7 day brigade in Panama. Human Rights Brigades provides services to remote communities, on a family by family basis. By focusing on the families of one community at a time, volunteers can not only shadow and assist lawyers as they provide legal consulting to community members, but also take an active role in providing legal assistance on a personalized scale. Human Rights Brigades primarily works with remote communities that are under resourced and largely unaware of their legal rights.Volunteers lead legal education workshops tailored to the community on various topics such as: the land titling process, government institutions, family law, property rights, business rights, conflict resolution, etc. Student are able to put their legal research to practice and shadow lawyers in developing solutions to various legal problems. The brigade experience is a life changing experience for both the community members and our student volunteers!