COMMUNITY OUTREACH SERVICES
Overview
University law clinics are often situated on university campuses, which are usually far away from the communities that they intend serving. In the context of HIV/AIDS, it is even more difficult for a sick person to walk the long distances required to meet a lawyer. Through the outreach programme, the partner university law clinics identify community-based organisations that work specifically with people living with HIV and AIDS. The Community Outreach begins with a process where the selected students are required to identify, meet and consult with community based organisations that work with PLHIV’s before they come to South Africa for the training (Phase One). Thereafter, during the training programme in Pretoria the Community outreach is mainly about the weekly voluntary work that the whole HRDI team and all the students do (Phase Two). Finally, after completion of the training where lawyers and law students go to the clients on a regular basis to consult with them, train the members of certain groups and provide other assistance that may be required including helping with the vegetable garden (Phase Three).
HRDIs partners are working hard to ensure that their services meet the most vulnerable groups of society, despite local circumstances that make it difficult for them to extend their radius of assistance.
What we want to achieve through our outreach programme
- To reach the most vulnerable PLHIVs;
- To help build strong relationships between our partner ULCs, CBOs, NGOs and FBOs in the community;
- To provide legal assistance to the vulnerable groups through ULCs and students whom we trained; and
- To ensure that despite being lawyers, we are grounded in the realities of hard manual work that the vulnerable people are compelled to endure.
- Flexibility - while vulnerable groups have much in common, there are many differences that need to be taken into account;
- Respect of diversity; and
- Avoid duplication - instead seek to complement and co-operate with other like minded institutions.
- Ultimately reach the PLHIV in their places of worship where they seem to seek refuge;
- Assist in building networks/co-operations on location, where people are; and
- Assist in creating a functional and efficient outreach program for the ULC.
We work with the ULCs and students that we trained in each country. As stated above, we jointly identify a few well grounded Community Based Organisations (CBOs) that work with people living with HIV for possible future partnership on the provision of free legal services and voluntary manual work. At the early stages of the contact we (HRDI and the students) visit these CBOs to discuss how to work together.
After the completion of the training programme, when they return home, most of our former students return to these CBOs and begin providing free legal services to the extent possible. Some operate mobile clinics to reach the most vulnerable who find it difficult to walk long distances. Some provide legal services and on the garden as part of voluntary manual work with those CBOs. In addition, they identify other organisations with whom they develop partnerships and thereby increase the numbers of poor and vulnerable who now have access to legal advice and services where in the past they did not.
In some countries this arrangement works well while others it has not yet taken off properly.
For a description of the CBOs with whom our partners have worked or are still working with and to obtain a few specific details about what work is being done click on the relevant country.
Building a cadre of lawyers for social justice in Africa
