Kings College London Legal Empowerment Brigade August 2020 Panama

Start Date: Aug 23, 2020 12:00 AM
End Date: Aug 29, 2020 12:00 AM

Legal Empowerment Brigades primarily work with rural communities that are under-resourced and largely unaware of their own legal rights.

Throughout the week, volunteers shadow Panamanian lawyers to provide pro-bono legal consulting to rural communities. A free legal clinic provides opportunities for volunteers to experience first-hand the obstacles to justice and the culture of legal misinformation in rural communities. Volunteers also work to provide capacity-building workshops on various legal concepts to empower communities through education. Additionally, volunteers will help gather important information to initiate the process of resolving legal cases, many of which have been stalled in the Panamanian legal system through institutional inefficiencies and the prohibitively high costs of legal services.