Archives: Grants (page 2)

Parents of Black Children (PoBC) will continue their work to address anti-Black racism, systemic barriers, and the differential treatment experienced by Black students and their families within the education and adjacent systems. PoBC will update its Know Your Rights toolkit and develop a bilingual audio version. They will host webinars to educate families on their rights within the education system, the appeal process for suspensions and expulsions, and the processes to file human rights applications. PoBC will also continue to provide legal advice and support to families in Ontario who are navigating educational appeals and human rights applications.

The Court Navigator Program will address systemic barriers faced by Somali youth and families in Ottawa’s justice system. A Project Manager will oversee operations, while a Court Navigator with lived experience will provide one-on-one support, deliver multilingual legal education workshops, and receive training to prepare Impact of Race and Culture Assessments.

Rittenhouse aims to fill the gap for parolee support through working with people in prisons in Ontario before they are released on parole, to prepare them for the transition, inform them of their legal rights and responsibilities while on parole, and support them once they are released through connections to other services to prevent. This half-year program development grant will enable Rittenhouse to access the prison system and start developing their peer led parolee support program.

John Howard Society of York Region's (JHSYR) new program, WRAP: We Rise Against Pressure, complements their existing programs that prevent youth becoming involved in the criminal legal system. JHSYR will hire and equip two new case managers that will provide case management, court support/navigation, mentorship, and referrals to other supports. This funding will remove barriers for youth who are at risk of being involved in the criminal legal system and expand their service timelines for youth who have exhausted other service timelines and still need support, providing continuity of services.

The Conflict Analytics Lab (CAL) at Queen’s University is partnering with Pro Bono Ontario (PBO), a Foundation Catalyst grantee, and the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard (Harvard A2J Lab) to develop a housing focused AI tool integrated into CAL’s existing OpenJustice AI tool. This project phase will cover the creation of the housing focused AI logic and a randomized control trial (RCT) with the AI tool to test and validate the usefulness of the OpenJustice tool and the validity and accuracy of information OpenJustice provides PBO volunteer lawyers.

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CANLII) will use artificial intelligence to generate summaries of 96,000 Ontario judicial decisions and 51,980 federal case law and legislative documents. These summaries will be translated into both official languages and publicly available for free online access by legal professionals and the general public. This is phase 2 of the artificial intelligence summarization project, and will add to the 76,140 legal documents that were summarized in phase 1. The objective of the project is to make complex legal documents more accessible and searchable.

Durham Family & Cultural Centre, a Black-focused, Black-led, Black-serving (B3) charitable organization in Durham region, will hire a full-time Program Coordinator for one year to research other existing legal programs for Black and racialized youth and their families in Ontario to determine how to best meet their community’s legal needs.

The Navigating Our Rights (NOUR) project will equip Arab and African newcomer women in Ontario with culturally and linguistically tailored legal education, individualized navigation support, and peer-led community connections to overcome barriers to justice and strengthen their legal empowerment.

The Beyond Barriers initiative will strengthen access to justice for people with brain injuries in Ontario by expanding Brain Injury Association of Toronto’s online platform with survivor video narratives and plain-language legal information. The project will deliver a series of professional workshops and community forums and provide direct support to justice-involved individuals with acquired brain injury. Sessions will be developed in collaboration with the Project Consultant and placement coordinators, and delivered by the Project Outreach Coordinator, consultants, or legally trained volunteers depending on the audience and topic.

Equal Step: Supporting Equity Through Legal Education & Navigation is a joint initiative of The Help Centre and the Northumberland Community Legal Centre, aimed at improving access to justice for seniors and survivors of domestic violence in Northumberland County. The project will pair a Social Service Worker and a Paralegal/Community Legal Worker to deliver coordinated legal information, public legal education, document and form assistance, digital access support, and trauma-informed navigation through family, criminal, and civil legal processes. This work will strengthen clients’ ability to understand and exercise their legal rights, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities where access to justice is limited by geography, poverty, and systemic barriers.