Texas A&M University Legal Empowerment August 2019 Panama

Start Date: Aug 13, 2019 12:00 AM
End Date: Aug 19, 2019 12:00 AM

Global Brigades offers 7-day Legal Empowerment Brigades throughout the year in Panama and Honduras. Legal Empowerment Brigades primarily work with rural communities that are under-resourced and largely unaware of their own legal rights. Throughout the week, Legal Empowerment Brigades volunteers shadow Honduran/Panamanian lawyers to provide pro-bono legal consulting to rural communities. A free legal clinic provides opportunities for volunteers to not only receive experience with Honduran/Panamanian legal professionals but also experience first-hand the obstacles to justice and the culture of legal misinformation in rural communities. Volunteers also work to provide capacity building and education-based workshops on various legal concepts to empower communities through education. Additionally, volunteers continue shadowing Honduran/Panamanian lawyers while they gather important information to initiate the process of resolving family legal cases, many of which have been stalled in the Honduran/Panamanian legal system through institutional inefficiencies and the prohibitive high costs of legal services. Between brigades, Global Brigades’ in-country staff works to secure legal outcomes and provide follow-up to the community.