Description
The majority of rural civic organizations cannot satisfy their own and their clients’ legal needs. This issue reduces the effectiveness of NGOs as they operate without legal support. The lack of information about the fast changing legal environment sets up barriers in implementing local initiations. The objective of the project is to implement a community based co-operative initiation that has model value in order to satisfy the legal needs of rural civic society. The advocacy skills of civic organizations will improve, the legal representation of vulnerable social groups will be better. PILnet aims to replicate its Budapest model in the country by creating regional pro bono platforms serving as connections between NGOs, lawyers, law firms and law schools/students. Trainings will be held; the organization will forward its knowledge and experience about case-sharing to NGO's, and will establish four case-sharing platforms and launch the case-forwarding: A formal network will be realized with the goal of providing pro bono legal support (guidance, advocacy, trainings) to active NGOs operating in the countryside (13-19000).
Summary of project results
The majority of rural civic organizations cannot satisfy their own and their clients’ legal needs. Without legal support their advocacy capacity remains weak, they can not follow the fast changing legal environment and so on. That is why the project implementers aimed at launching sustainable free of charge (pro bono) legal services for civil society organizations working in the countryside in 4 rural regions in Hungary. The PILnet Foundation established local case intermediary (pro bono) platforms by extending the model of the Budapest based pro bono centre on rural areas, in this way they wanted to provide a link, connections between the nonprofit legal initiatives of Budapest based and rural civic organizations, lawyers, legal advisors, and legal faculties of universities. With the help of the Hungarian Bar Association rural lawyers were activated as well. PILnet also mobilized it's corporate relationships from Budapest to support regional human right and Community law issues. As a result of the project the advocacy capacities of civil society organizations were improved, the public interest law infrastructure was successfully created by the project implementers. In more details, if a citizen, a community initiative, a civic organization would like to acquire legal support (legal information, legal advices, suit representation, etc.), then it is available in these rural areas locally as a pro bono cooperation opportunity provided by legal professionals. In three regions (Miskolc, Szeged, Győr) these platforms were created, but there were also legal professionals in Debrecen, Nyíregyháza, Győr and Sopron who offered their pro bono services for civil society organizations. Altogether 96 concrete cases were when legal professionals provided legal advices pro bono in the frame of the project, and 4 faculties of law of universities offered their services to the civil society as a result of the project. 51 cooperating partners, organizations and institutions were reached and involved into the project.
Summary of bilateral results