Namati is a Sanskrit word that means “to shape something into a curve.” Martin Luther King Jr. said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” We call ourselves Namati because we’re dedicated to bending that curve.

This video was generously produced by Skoll.org, a long-time partner of ours.

From January to December, Namati and our partners supported 25,000+ people in 6 countries to address injustices involving land, environment, healthcare, and citizenship. Together, we achieved remedies that directly improved the lives of 300,000+ people, and systemic changes that affected millions more.

We invite you to explore the stories behind these facts and figures in our annual impact report. 

In these pages, you’ll also discover how the Legal Empowerment Network drove our movement for justice forward by fostering deep learning among members across borders and by co-launching a global fund with the goal of investing $100 million in grassroots justice efforts worldwide.

We are excited to share that the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund has reached its goal of raising and distributing $1 million USD in rapid-response, flexible grants.

The second and final round of grantees includes 27 outstanding groups, all members of our network, who are rising to meet the challenges of the ongoing pandemic.

In Thailand, Community Resource Centre Foundation (CRC) is supporting communities to bring about the enforcement of environmental laws and seek remedies for harms caused by industrial projects. With gatherings and travel still restricted, CRC is using digital tools to assist community members to attend virtual public hearings, submit evidence, and move advocacy campaigns online.

In Kenya, Keeping Alive Societies’ Hope (KASH) is working to meet the justice and healthcare needs of the populations most affected by HIV, who face increased police brutality, homelessness, and limited access to treatment in the pandemic. Through radio campaigns, KASH informs these groups of their rights, ensures they have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, and sensitizes members of the public to the injustices they face.

Check out the full list of grantees — selected by a panel of leaders from across our community — on the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund website.

Community members discuss local laws at a meeting in Kayin state, Myanmar. (Photo: Namati)

Members of the Legal Empowerment Network—now over 2,800 justice organizations from nearly every country—have struggled to rise to the challenges created by the pandemic while keeping their people safe. To support their vital work, we teamed up with several other partners in 2020 to create the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund. With this second round of grantees, we have now fulfilled its goal.

We recognize that $1 million is a drop in the ocean. With more than half the world’s population facing injustices they cannot remedy, we need substantial and consistent investment in the essential work of grassroots justice defenders. Our community has been working hard to make that happen. The Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF), which launched in September, is a direct result of years of collective action. Recently the LEF, which aims to raise $100 million over 10 years, announced its inaugural open call for proposals, with a deadline of February 18th, 2022.

While the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund has concluded, our work towards securing long-term financing for justice continues.

To the grantees and the thousands of others fighting for justice in the most difficult of circumstances: we see you, we thank you, and we stand with you.

With love and solidarity,

Vivek, Stacey, Sonia, Abby, and the whole team supporting the Legal Empowerment Network

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The LEF aims to mobilize $100 million over 10 years to support visionary grassroots justice groups that are helping people to understand and claim their rights while shaping the laws that govern them.

An estimated 5.1 billion people—a staggering two-thirds of the global population—lack meaningful access to justice. That means that when their rights are violated, they have nowhere to turn for help. As a result, Indigenous peoples’ lands are taken without their consent, the air and water of low-income communities are polluted with impunity, and ethnic minorities are denied basic government services like health care and education.

Grassroots justice defenders across the globe are striving to meet this challenge head-on. By supporting communities to know, use, and shape the law, they are equipping them to fight back against injustice and bring about systemic change. But their work is chronically underfunded. Members of the Legal Empowerment Network have advocated tirelessly for increased financing through the Justice For All campaign and other means. The creation of the Legal Empowerment Fund is a direct response to their calls for action.

Through its grant-making and technical assistance, the LEF will:

• Provide renewable and longterm core funding to frontline civil society organizations
• Drive and share learning around effective legal empowerment strategies
• Build the collective power and agency of excluded communities, including women, Indigenous people, and children
• Enhance access to justice, improve laws and policies, and push forward systemic change

At the live-streamed launch in New York, Hewlett Foundation and Mott Foundation made initial commitments totaling $15 million to help kickstart the fund. Thanks to a gift from Mackenzie Scott, Namati contributed a further $5 million to be used, in part, as a challenge grant to encourage governments, foundations, and other groups to donate.

The Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR) will host the LEF. In the coming months, they will launch governance mechanisms and strategy co-design processes that are inclusive, participatory, and accountable to those most affected by the fund’s decision-making. Information about how the fund grantees will be determined during this planning period.

For more information, visit the Legal Empowerment Fund website at https://globalhumanrights.org/legal-empowerment

If, like me, you’ve felt blue at times during this last year, or tired, or hopeless, this 2019-2020 impact report might be a tonic. You’ll find here stories of ordinary people taking on grave injustice, and winning.

You’ll read how a grieving mother in Mozambique organized with her neighbors to end systemic corruption at the hospital they depend on. How communities in Myanmar stopped unlawful manganese mines from destroying their forests, water, and farmland. How residents from a low-income, majority African-American neighborhood in Washington DC forced the city’s largest infrastructure project to reduce its air pollution.

You’ll read how, tested by the pandemic, our global community of grassroots justice groups — over 2,400 organizations, from nearly every country in the world — has strived to meet this moment. How we came together to create the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund, which has made more of that vital work possible.

Learning from our successes is important, because we face profound challenges. Several paralegals we work with in Myanmar are now in hiding, and one is in prison, because of stands they took in favor of democracy. Most team members with our partner in India are dealing with COVID themselves or caring for sick loved ones. In Peru, three Indigenous leaders — partners of our network member Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales — were killed in February and March 2021 for resisting illegal deforestation.

Worldwide, the share of the population in extreme poverty is likely to increase for the first time since the 1990s. The Director of the World Health Organization declared we’ve reached an era of vaccine apartheid. The global Democracy Index had its lowest overall score in 2020 since The Economist started tracking in 2006. And we are on course to experience catastrophic climate change, which will affect poor and exploited communities the most.

The only things that can conquer challenges like these are movements of people committed to justice. And our movement is stronger and more determined than ever.

We look forward to joining hands with you on the road ahead.

We are proud to announce the first grantees of the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund: 30 outstanding groups, all members of our network, who are rising to meet the challenges of this moment.

In Argentina, Familias Diversas Asociación Civil is combatting the pandemic-related rise in the physical and sexual abuse of women, children, and members of the LGBTIQA+ community. FDAC is building an online platform with legal information and training, so that people at risk can use the law to protect themselves.

In Nigeria, Grassroots Development Support and Rural Enlightenment Initiative is ensuring that people with disabilities have access to life-saving information, and have a meaningful say in how the government responds to COVID.

Check out all 30 grantees, from 20+ countries, on the website for the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund. These organizations were selected by a panel of leaders from across our community.

The pandemic exacerbated existing injustices and created new ones. Members of the Legal Empowerment Network—now over 2,400 justice organizations from nearly every country—have struggled to rise to these challenges while keeping their people safe. To support their vital work, we teamed up with several other partners to create the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund.

We recognize that this fund is a drop in the ocean. With more than half the world’s population lacking meaningful access to justice, we need governments and foundations to make consistent, long term investment in the essential work of grassroots legal empowerment. Our community will continue to advocate for that larger shift.

To the grantees and the thousands of others fighting for justice in the most difficult of circumstances: we see you, we thank you, and we stand with you.

This post was originally sent as a mailer to our subscribers.

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The course is designed to evoke discussion and equip participants with practical knowledge to advance their legal empowerment work. This includes practical skills sessions on topics like power mapping, community legal education pedagogy, and using case data for advocacy.

To this end, each participant is required to develop a detailed work plan based on course sessions and daily feedback from their peers. In 2018, we introduced awards for outstanding participant work plans. The organizational work plans that receives the most votes from faculty and fellow participants are each awarded $5,000 USD to support them in their implementation.

Namati and the Legal Empowerment Network are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 Legal Empowerment Leadership Course Awards.

VESNA SHAPKOSKI (Association for Legal Education and Transparency, North Macedonia)

Vesna’s work-plan focuses on improving access to legal and paralegal aid to people from marginalized communities in North Macedonia such as people living in rural areas, families living in social risk and former prisoners. Vesna’s program entails the launching of a website containing a “Call emergency paralegal aid” window with options for electronic and phone communication.

BHAVNA RAMJI (Casual Workers Advice Office, South Africa)

Bhavna aims to improve her organization’s programs by shifting its focus to supporting the casual workers they serve to become experts in their own cases, on each other’s cases, and part of the advocacy around them. The objective is to transform clients into a group of leaders who can directly claim their own interests against the government and their employers, instead of being passive recipients of legal services. Among the planned activities is the convening of small group discussions with representatives from different cases, and transforming these meetings into capacity-building and strategizing activities.

MARINA DIAS (Instituto de Defesa do Direito de Defesa [IDDD, Institute for Defense of the Right to Defense], Brazil)

Marina’s work-plan covers a legal empowerment project focusing on incarcerated women and mothers. It aims to empower women leaders to devise strategies to convince the judges of the importance of having these women around their families and their communities. The project pushes for the implementation of a 2016 law that guarantees the right of women who are pregnant and/or have children under 12 years old and/or a child with some disability, to respond to the process under provisional release or house arrest. This project also intends to raise awareness on securing liberty for incarcerated women as part of the agenda on gender and violence while advocating for a community organizing approach.

TOM WEERACHAT (International Accountability Project, Thailand)

Tom’s work-plan aims to strengthen and popularize the legitimacy of community-led data. Specifically, Tom plans to collect and consolidate cases where the legitimacy of community-led monitoring and evaluation, and community-led data collection and analysis, is being questioned by governments, companies, and development finance institutions. The work-plan entails the compilation of reliable methodology for community-driven data collection and analysis, and reaching out to other organizations who face similar problems on their data. Tom’s work-plan also aims to systematize their data collection to focus more on systemic change, and to share what they learn through this process with partner organizations.

MARTHA OPILI (Keeping Alive Societies’ Hope [KASH], Kenya)

Martha’s work-plan focuses on the recognition and regulation of community-based, theme-specific paralegals. The work-plan aims to facilitate the involvement of the paralegals in dialogues with the state and paralegal regulatory bodies on legal empowerment and paralegal recognition and regulation. The work-plan advocates for a proper paralegal regulatory structure/policy that puts into consideration the divergent needs of community paralegals.

UYANGA TSOGTSAIKHAN (Asia-Africa Development Relief Fund [ADRF], Mongolia)

Uyanga’s work-plan involves the redesign of her organization’s curriculum for a legal aid project. The project will have the objective of not only educating the community members on their legal issues, but also train and support selected participants to be paralegals. These paralegals will offer legal aid services to their community, and serve as the agents of legal empowerment; educating and encouraging their communities to speak up and fight for justice.

CHELCY ALMA AMINATA HEROE (Domestic Helpers Organization, Sierra Leone)

Chelcy’s work-plan centers on the recognition of the rights of domestic workers and the reduction of rights violations. The work-plan involves advocacy for free space for the formation of domestic workers’ unions, the development of a legal framework referral pathway, and training and support to domestic workers. The work-plan aims to build a movement of domestic workers in the country that will harness their collective power to push for systemic change.

SHRUTI SHRESTHA (Nepal Disabled Women Association, Nepal)

Shruti’s work-plan focuses on empowering women and girls with disabilities to become effective community leaders that will take the initiative to assert their rights. The work-plan aims to address the challenges of exclusion, inequality, identity, accessibility, and justice that women with disabilities face in their daily lives.

For more information about the 2019 Legal Empowerment Leadership Course, please visit this summary post on the Network’s discussion forum.

Over the last several months, the Legal Empowerment Network, which Namati convenes, has consistently heard that small, flexible infusions of resources could help Network members adapt to these unique circumstances. A COVID-19 sprint challenge revealed that 78% of respondents have initiatives in mind to better support communities but cannot implement them due to a lack of resources. Over 60% of them reported that they would need less than $10,000 to put their ideas into practice.

For this reason, Namati and the Legal Empowerment Network are thrilled to announce the launch of the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund. In partnership with The Elders, the Fund for Global Human Rights, and Pathfinders for Just and Inclusive Societies, we aim is to raise US$1 million to invest in grassroots legal empowerment organizations worldwide.

COVID-19 response packages — whether governmental or philanthropic — must include support for the essential work of legal empowerment if we are to realize a just and equitable recovery. With help from the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund, grantees will be able to demonstrate how modest investments in legal empowerment efforts can bear powerful results. Flexible, rapid-response grants will support efforts to defend rights affected by lockdowns and emergency measures, help discriminated groups gain access to life-saving aid, advocate for equitable pandemic recovery plans, and more.

As Ban Ki-moon, Deputy-Chair of The Elders and former UN Secretary-General, said:

“We need to ensure that justice is at the heart of the COVID-19 response and long-term recovery plans. The Elders welcome initiatives such as this COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund and the efforts of governments and the private sector to help the 5.1 billion people who lack meaningful access to justice.”

The nearly 500 organizations who have participated in the Legal Empowerment Network’s sprint challenge and other COVID-19 activities will be eligible for the initial round of funding. If more funds are available in the future, we hope to open up the call to the wider community of grassroots justice organizations.

We understand that the needs of our Network members are many. We hope that the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund, and our initiatives to come, will help the legal empowerment movement as a whole to build a more just world in the aftermath of the pandemic.

For more information about the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund or to make a donation, visit the fund’s website. If you would like to make a major gift or to come on board as a funding partner, please contact soniapark@namati.org.

Photo credit: Omari Hamisi/Nubian Rights Forum

The Legal Empowerment and Community Lawyering Innovation Lab for Latin America aims to support and strengthen grassroots justice organizations, providing them with small grants (5,000 USD) and technical support to implement innovative ideas, experiment with new approaches, or undertake small projects that can be implemented within a maximum of 8 months.

The eligible projects can, for example, be focused on work with community paralegals or advocates, developing community capacity-building materials (texts, videos, audios, etc.), strategic litigation, social auditing, or the use of new technologies, among many other activities. The key is for projects to use legal empowerment to help people, groups and/or communities to overcome injustice in any of its diverse forms.

Faced by the global crisis generated by COVID-19, people more than ever need tools to demand their rights and participate in the decisions that affect their lives. For this reason, initiatives aimed at adapting work and supporting communities in overcoming challenges in the context of the pandemic will also be eligible.

A panel of judges will determine the four selected organizations to participate in the Innovation Lab. The deadline to apply is July 1 at 23:59 GMT.

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Together with members of the Legal Empowerment Network, we will advocate for greater resources and support for grassroots justice groups as a means of ensuring a just response and recovery from this global crisis. But to do this, we need to put forth our best ideas and clearest examples.

The COVID-19 Justice Challenge

We’re calling on you, and all grassroots justice groups, to take 10 minutes to share your experience.

Two questions are particularly urgent for our community:

• How is your organization adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• What kinds of resources do you require to remain effective?

We need to move quickly to influence the pandemic responses currently being designed by world leaders and donors. The COVID-19 Justice Challenge will remain open for a week, until May 8th.

We are all in this together. So let’s work together to come up with lasting solutions and advocate for the resources we need to implement them.