National Racial Justice Training Project in the Works

6/25/2010 12:45 pm

The Center for Legal Aid Education is excited to announce the award of a one-year planning grant from the Ford Foundation to develop a National Racial Justice Training Project.

Structural racism is one of the most profound causes of persistent poverty. The goal of the Racial Justice Training Project is to develop a network of equal justice advocates who are trained in recognizing the impacts of structural racism and who have the skills to engage in affirmative, results-oriented race-based advocacy. The Project will provide skills-based training on all facets of advocacy as well as create a network of support and mentoring for equal justice advocates pursuing a race-equity agenda. 

As initially conceived, the goals of the Racial Justice Training Project are fivefold:

·         Increase equal justice advocates’ capacities to recognize systems, structures and practices that result in racial disparities and the structural racialization of poverty;

·         Increase equal justice advocates’ capacities to develop and implement effective advocacy strategies to promote racial equity and dismantle systems and structures that result in racial disparities;

·         Build an ongoing national network of advocates committed to and skilled in racial justice work;

·         Develop a cadre of experienced equal justice attorneys and advocates able and willing to serve as faculty for racial justice training programs and as mentors for advocates committed to pursuing racial justice initiatives; and,

·         Move legal services and equal justice advocates nationally to adopt an explicitly race conscious affirmative advocacy approach to their work.

Building on the successes of CLAE’s year‐long Leadership Institutes and its New England Structural Racism Initiative, the pilot Project will include two year‐long Institutes, each including a series of sequenced training programs that further equal justice advocates’ knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to advance a racial justice agenda  

CLAE looks forward to working with our national partners on this exciting initiative. For more information about the project, please contact Zenobia Lai, Senior Training Director at CLAE.

« Previous news item · Return to news listing · Next news item »