Like the previous Trios, the Trio for Justice aimed to raise awareness of access to justice issues in the region and give an opportunity for the local and international community to meet our team and partners. Besides networking, the event’s main purpose was to raise funds for many of our access to justice and implement and support university-based Clinical Legal Education (CLE) programs. And it was very successful in raising awareness and raised a good amount of funds.

The 4th Trio for Justice was supported by donations of raffle prizes and money, the local Thailand municipality as well as advertising benefits by organizations, law firms and businesses both at the local and international level like Powerhouse Gym, Ashurst, Energizer, Herbert Smith Freehills, Beacon Law Corporation, Mansfield Residence and many more. We are so grateful for all of your support.

It was a gorgeous morning and 150 people participated at the Trio for Justice with participants, attendees, guests coming from all throughout the globe. We also had the support of 30 volunteers who assisted in many ways from distributing water to giving directions on the track.

It was a great success, and we look forward to seeing many more athletes and volunteers ready to run and walk at the 5^th Trio for Justice which will be held on January 12^th, 2014 at Huey Tueng Tao Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

With your continued support, we can all help raise awareness of social justice issues and fundraise money for a good cause together.

Photo Gallery of the 4th Trio for Justice – click here

The 2^nd Southeast Asia/Asia Pro Bono Conference and Workshop will bring together academics, law students, lawyers, judiciary, pro bono professionals, policy makers, civil society and non-profit representatives to consider the multifarious ways pro bono initiatives can strengthen access to justice in Southeast Asia and internationally. The conference and workshop will be an exciting mix of keynote speech, panel discussion, poster presentations and interactive workshop sessions.  There will be lots of opportunity for participation, collaboration and dialogue. The Conference will showcase selected, timely and innovative pro bono partnerships and provide a unique space for participants to collaborate in order to improve access to justice for some of the world’s most marginalised communities.

Click here for more details on the Conference/Workshop in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam in 2013.

Law students are just the best. Street Law works with law students in the USA and in many other countries around the world. In our experience, law students are always enthusiastic, involved, and innovative. We find that law students instinctively understand that good law lessons and programs use interactive teaching methods and cause students to think and be active participants in their own learning. This is just as true for the law students in the CLE program in Vietnam, when they are presented with the opportunity.

When I first arrived in Hanoi I met with Hà Công Anh Bảo, other faculty and students at the Foreign Trade University. One of our first discussions centered on the use of the terms “moot court” and “mock trial.” They were beginning a new CLE program and were eager to learn how to set up a moot court. To clarify that we were talking about the same activities, we agreed to call a first instance court trial a “mock trial” and an appellant court hearing a “moot court”. As an example of the first term, we conducted a mock trial based on the theft of money from a business. Then we conducted a moot court the next day to review an appeal of a decision on environmental protection, to question what the code actually says about environmental protection.

In the moot court, we asked if the lower court ruling was correct in allowing a company to continue to pollute, thereby saving jobs. In the discussion at the end of the day one law student comment that she liked moot courts better than mock trials. When asked to explain her statement she said that the moot court was harder, as you really had to think and analyze the law in a way she never had thought about.

Presently I am at Vinh University and enjoying life on the campus. I live in the dorm and wander around the neighbourhood looking for the best pho. The mornings and late afternoons are generally spent with the law students, working on methodology or English. One evening we were preparing a lesson for the law students to deliver to students at a local orphanage called SOS. The topic was child abuse and the students were thinking about using role plays to introduce the topic. We had a long discussion (thanks to the Google translator) about the proper use of role plays. Role playing is a powerful learning tool and often it is the only thing a student remembers from a lesson.

Therefore, selecting the role play is very important and must reflect the values and information that you want the students to learn. One student looked at me with a quizzical expression and asked what I meant by value. While I was trying to explain a “light bulb” went off in her eyes and she exclaimed, “Oh, that is why the SOS students always laugh about child abuse instead of being concerned.” It was instant understanding based on her experiences in teaching.

As a Street Law instructor you can’t ask for better understanding than you get from Law students like these. However the real test will be tomorrow when they deliver a truly interactive lesson to 80 SOS students. They are up to the task and have the understanding, if not the prior practice. It will be through continued practice that these students will learn the skills to be come as good a Street Law facilitator as any in in the world.

“If you want to go fast you go alone. If you want to go far, you go with others”.  This Afghan saying, quoted by Mr. Toily Kurbanov, Myanmar Country Director of UNDP, during the  closing remarks at the Promoting Justice Sector Development in New Democracies – a Seminar on Comparative Experiences from the Region’ in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar 24-25 January 2013 clearly demonstrated the overwhelming intent by the event’s participants to work together to achieve greater rule of law and access to justice in the developing Myanmar democratic movement.

This two-day seminar, which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) co-hosted with the Union Attorney General’s Office, allowed for a dialogue among national and international experts for strengthening the justice sector in Myanmar.

Public officials from the Union Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Court of the Union, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Immigration and Population, the Myanmar Police Force, the Bar Council of Myanmar and international justice experts from the region and around the world, engaged in a variety of panel discussions. Over 180 individuals attended the seminar. The seminar participants agreed that the single the most powerful tools for legal reform are legal aid and legal awareness.

BABSEA CLE’s Director Bruce A. Lasky was invited to the event as a Justice Expert to provide insight and present on two separate panels.  The first panel’s focus was on the ways and means to strengthen the justice sector through justice education and the second was on the need for independency and accountability of the judiciary.

Both areas were overwhelmingly received in a very positive manner.  This was followed by an evening dinner with the Myanmar Deputy Minister of Education and representatives from a number of Myanmar university law programs.  Everyone involved is now eager to begin developing justice and clinical legal education initiatives.

The event did not exist in isolation and it is important to stress that the day before, on January 23, 2013 Bruce A. Lasky co-presented with Mr. Nick Booth, Policy Advisor for Governance, Human Rights and Access to Justice, UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre, Bangkok, on the aims and benefits of clinical legal education at the Yangon, University Law Faculty. This event, another first of its kind in Myanmar, was attended by more than 80 graduate students, law lecturers and lawyers, all of them eager to learn more about what clinical legal education is and how to start such programs.

 “I have used the word amazing much in the past few years and I do not use this word lightly. The event in both Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw though was an amazing like no other I had been a part of. I was filled with such energy and desire to assist in any reasonable way I and BABSEA CLE can to support the justice education sector. I left with plans swimming in my mind on how to do this. “- Bruce Lasky.

As a result of our participation, during February and now into March, BABSEA CLE has worked in collaboration with a number of our regional partners to collectively come up with what we believe to be very tangible, workable ideas to assist in carrying the above vision forward.  All of us in our organization are incredibly excited and we look forward to reporting much more on this in the very near future.

Author’s Note: Much of this article comes from a recent UNDP press release that can be accessed here:

http://www.mm.undp.org/NewsandPressreleases/NarNewsandPressreleases/Pressreleases/Justice%20development%20Jan2013%202nd.html

As a Canadian student doing an academic year abroad at Chiang Mai University, I was given the opportunity to do a placement with BABSEA CLE. For our second semesters we have to do a placement with an organization and write a research report linked to it. Though I am still in my third year of undergraduate studies, I have been debating going to law school after my undergraduate degree. As BABSEA CLE deals with legal education and social justice, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity and experience. 

As an intern at BABSEA CLE I have participated in many activities. The highlights include helping with awareness raising and fundraising in the 4th Trio for Justice event, teaching community legal education (CLE) lesson plans to law students at the University of Phayao with QUT students and assisting with a funding proposal. I have also been volunteering by teaching English at Wat Sai Moon (Myanmar temple) and to a colleague at BABSEA CLE.

It was through BABSEA CLE that I got my first experiences teaching. I found it an extremely nerve wracking experience, which I did not expect due to my experience with public speaking and theatre. It also gave me a whole new appreciation for everything teachers do and the amount of preparation involved in a single lesson.

Working with BABSEA CLE really changed my perspectives on a lot of things. One is that the word “Impossible” is really just a word. The amount of times while working together on a project I thought we would not be able to do it, only to complete it successfully.

Before I always used to prefer working by myself, but BABSEA CLE is filled with such talented, nice and hardworking people that it really changed my perspective. Not only are the finished products stronger by everyone contributing their time, effort and ideas, it pushes you to do a better job. Sometimes we become too easy on ourselves but you cannot let your team down when they depend on you.

The cause of educating marginalized people about the law, their rights and how to access their legal rights is a very empowering process as you are giving power to the people and not simply telling them what to do. It is really cool being able to help people and make a difference.

The longer I have stayed here, the more little by little, I begin to understand the massive impact BABSEA CLE has in helping people. And to have been part of BABSEA CLE has been a great privilege. My time with BABSEA CLE has humbled me, pushed me and made me better person for it. I know when I leave my placement in April, I will never forget the memories and friendships and skills I have gained through interning here.

National University of Laos, Faculty of Law & Political Science. Vientiane , Laos.

I arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand for my internship with BABSEA CLE the goal of gaining experience in community legal education (CLE). Though my exposure to CLE was limited, I had spent the latter part of my M.A. in Geography studying land acquisition law in India. This had alerted me to the immense inequality in access to information about land law, particularly individual rights and state responsibilities, which contributed to many of the adverse outcomes I observed. With my internship at BABSEA CLE, I was eager to investigate pragmatic solutions to these information imbalances and to learn from the individuals in the organization who built the programs throughout South-East Asia from the ground up.

 What I found was a tight network of activists, lawyers, and students who worked tirelessly to build relationships between legal clinics, vulnerable groups in the community, the government, and other organizations. Most important for my purposes was my enhanced understanding of the challenges of carrying out community legal education. While I was impatient and eager, the process was slow and painstaking. It required constant negotiation between the educator and the learner. At some times, education, time, and income presented themselves as barriers to disseminating information about the law. At others, language itself was the challenge. Paring down the elaborate and sometimes obscure language of the law not only refined my editing skills, but also forced me to think further about how complicated legal language can reinforce imbalances of both information and power.

BABSEA CLE also connected me with Equitable Cambodia, a legal education and advocacy organization based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I spent two weeks in working with the Community Education and Legal Empowerment (CELA) program. Going to villages in Koh Kong Province to deliver lessons on land law reinforced my belief in the power of community legal education to mitigate disparities in access to justice. Not only that, it reinforced my commitment to continuing to work with organizations like BABSEA CLE as I enter into my first year of law school in the fall of 2013.

By Catherine Campbell: Associate Lecturer Law School QUT

In January 2013 thirteen Law students from the Queensland University of Technology completed a 3 week internship with BABSEA CLE. This is the third successive year in which students have completed the internship for academic credit. Students are enrolled in an undergraduate law work-integrated learning unit ‘Learning in Professional Practice’ which is offered over the summer semester.

With my QUT colleague, Associate Professor Tina Cockburn (who developed the internship program with BABSEA CLE starting as a virtual placement) we originally joined our QUT students for a few days in January 2013. Instead we ended up joining the students for a longer time to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the program, as well as provide an academic mentor for students.

I joined the QUT students for in January. I arrived in Chiang Mai just in time for the Trio for Justice. The students were at Huey Tueng Tao park near Chiang Mai by 3am to set up the course. I arrived at 7am to find the students bright and cheerful and keen to walk or run the course. I was impressed – most had had 3 hours sleep or less, and they were still positive and enthusiastic. This attitude and energy endured throughout the placement and I was constantly amazed at how hard-working, professional and engaged the students were.

It was only when I was with the 8 QUT students and other BABSEA CLE interns at University of Phayao (UP) for a week that I realised the value of having an academic supervisor accompany the students. The students could have managed without me, but I was a sounding board for daily issues and cultural concerns.  I assisted the students to reflect on their experiences by referring them to readings and other resources provided in ‘Learning in Professional Practice’.  I was also the link between the Thai lecturers (ajaans) and the QUT students.

The Phayao trip was a unique experience for me and my students. We slept in school classrooms and camping in tents in a nature reserve.  The QUT/BABSEA CLE interns taught CLE lessons to the Thai students in open school gyms and under trees. We ate rice and ‘spicy’ for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  We used squat toilets and had cold showers or no showers. We sang songs with the Thai students and played games with children in the local schools. Every day was a new experience and we were often uncertain about what was happening next. I was expecting some of my students to find this challenging. Occasionally, I had to reassure my students to just ‘go with the flow’, but overall I was impressed with their adaptability and resilience.

I was also surprised by my own level of resilience. I had expected to find the intense week of proximity and new experiences challenging – but apart from the need to find an uninhabited classroom for one night, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with my students and the Thai students and staff.

The last week back in Chiang Mai the students debriefed. As their academic supervisor, it was exciting to hear how they had developed and learned from their internship experiences.  Written reflections don’t capture the excitement, joy and wonder of the learning journey which was evident from their presentations. It was a privilege to spend time with my students, to get to know them better, and to share their learning journey.

And  Ha Cong Anh Bao:  Law Lecturer of FTU’s CLE Team

On the 26th and 27th of January, just almost one month after the official date of our starting cooperation among the Faculty of Law, Foreign Trade University (FTU), BABSEA CLE and CLE Foundation. We followed up the successful CLE Introductory Workshop with the second training workshop on “Legal Clinic Education Methodology at Foreign Trade University.” The workshop was incredibly successful as well. Importantly, the workshop was bringing over international CLE experts like Bebs Chorak, who has been working with Street Law Inc. for many years and Binh Nguyen Thanh, a young lawyer who helps run the Binh An Law Firm among many other experts.

We started the second day with the content concentrating on three main topics. The first lesson involved teaching the FTU CLE team with the background of the establishment and maintenance of the CLE program through role plays simulating some legal consultation situations at a CLE office. The second lesson dealt with sharing experience in the establishment and maintenance of street-law offices presented by BABSEA CLE experts. The third, right before the end of the morning session, was preparation of CLE role plays by four student teams.

Also during the last session, the four student teams performed their CLE simulations and gave feedbacks about such topics like domestic violence, violations of road laws by youth and we also discussed drug prevention for young offenders. We looked at case studies, focusing on penalties for the violations of those law  topics we discussed in the role plays. At the end of each simulation, each team self-evaluated their work as well as gained assessment from the other teams and experts on how to  improve their work. The BABSEA CLE experts really appreciated the quick learning and creativity of the FTU CLE student members, which were the basis for the successful CLE implementation at FTU.

The training workshop was a good example on implementing CLE program when FTU had no funds to organize it. However, with strong support from BABSEA CLE and the FTU management board, the workshops were held effectively. It also showed the cooperation  of CLE networks  when TUU, HU and VNU sent their team members to share their experience and the  opportunity to get FTU involved more in CLE activities in Hanoi and Vietnam. Hopefully FTU will soon play an active role in CLE movement in the near future.

I first was introduced to BABSEA CLE in an almost overlooked email from my university careers centre. I remember that strong initial spark of interest as I saw the connection of human rights work, travel and a chance to teach others. Soon I was drafting an application and awaiting a reply to whether I would be given the chance of a lifetime to mix work with pleasure. Sure enough, I was granted my wish and preparations were set to travel halfway across the globe, entirely on my own.

This was a daunting opportunity right from the start. To be a 12 hour flight away from my friends and family was something I was dying to try, but at the same time something that instilled a deep-rooted anxiety within me. As I got on the plane to travel to Thailand from my home country of New Zealand, I found myself wondering just what sort of people and experiences would await me upon arrival. I arrived late in the evening not to an empty house as I’d expected, but a group of warm and friendly people waiting to welcome me in. This was not the kind of warmth extended merely out of politeness or etiquette, but a genuine care for another’s well-being  That first moment sums up my experience for the following two months, camaraderie for one another in the work we were there to do.

I found that the work that BABSEA CLE does in the community and beyond extended from values owned not just by an organisation, but by its people. Our visits to community centres and universities were fuelled by a passion to be involved and help others. That same passion that drove me to apply and become involved in the organisation as an intern was not a unique feeling but something that spurred everyone else into action as well. And just as any workplace is made by its employees, so was my experience made by my co-workers. Each teaching session at a university or community had hours of collaboration and teamwork behind it, showing me a lesson is as much the preparation and people involved in making it as it is the time in front of the class itself.

The key notion I take in my return to New Zealand is how powerful acceptance and support is to those around me and just how easy it is to allow someone to feel at home by extending a hand of friendship and equality. The lesson BABSEA CLE offers us all is that this hand of humanity needs to be extended even further, to those marginalised and often not greeted with the genuine appreciation deserved equally by all, as much as it needs to be extended to those in our own lives.