Category: Multiple Regions

Guest Blog: Pro Bono Legal Advice Opens the Tap to Provide Clean Water

March 22 marked the commemoration of World Water Day, an opportunity to focus public attention on critical issues relating to water. A key issue concerns the fact that 768 million people still do not have access to safe drinking water. Millions of people around the world are forced to choose between having to travel great distances to collect clean water or to drink water which is contaminated. Neither option is ideal. Children (and girls in particular) are often withdrawn from school to collect water for their families. And the consequences of drinking dirty water, as we already know, can lead

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Protecting Women from Violence with Pro Bono

On November 25, the world celebrated the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Around the world, violence against women and girls has become one of the most pervasive tragedies of our time. According to UN Women, up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. The group also states that acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined, in women ages 15 to 44. These statistics are among the reasons why the United Nations designated a day of recognition to promote awareness of violence

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The Wheels on the Bus….

Pro bono clients, especially those in rural areas, often do not have the means to travel to a more populated city or town to receive legal assistance.  Mobile clinics are becoming a popular way to reach out to remote and underserved clients in need of help.  More than ten years ago the Winnebago of Justice was created in California, as a revival of the concept of a bookmobile, to be the nation’s first mobile legal self-help clinic.  Here are a few examples of innovative models of mobile pro bono assistance: Nixon Peabody*† participated in a pro bono project through the

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Global Spotlight: Combating Human Trafficking

In recognition of the thousands of men, women and children who fall prey to human trafficking in the U.S. every year, January has been declared Human Trafficking and Slavery Awareness and Prevention Month.  According to the Global Freedom Center: Modern slavery, or human trafficking, is the reprehensible practice of holding another in compelled service using whatever means necessary, be it physical or psychological. Anywhere between 12 [and] 27 million people are held in slavery around the world today – men, women, and children coerced into bonded labor, forced or sold into prostitution, held in domestic servitude, and enslaved in agricultural fields

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Global Spotlight: Vitamin Angels

Surely by now you’ve read our article, Pro Bono Food for Thought: Improving Access to Nutrition, in this month’s edition of The Wire, so you’re well aware of the important role pro bono plays in improving access to food and nutrition across America.  As it turns out, nutrition is an equally vital enterprise for firms and legal departments seeking to do global pro bono as well. Nine hundred and twenty-five million – or one out of every seven people in the world – went hungry last year, and one in three people in developing countries suffers vitamin and mineral deficiencies.  According to UNICEF, children are exceptionally vulnerable:

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