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🚨 BREAKING NEWS!🚨
Frontline Justice, a national initiative dedicated to empowering a new generation of community justice workers, is pleased to announce that it is launching the National Taskforce on Community Justice Worker Training with Ascendium’s support. Expanding the availability of high-quality legal help is particularly urgent given thenation’s huge justice gap in which people living at or near the poverty line receive inadequate or no help for 92% of their legal issues. Community justice workers are increasingly recognized as a key solution. Community justice workers are trained and trusted individuals who provide targeted legal information and advice to people in their communities helping people with critical life issues involving basic human needs, like having a safe place to live, making a dignified living, and caring for loved ones.
Though momentum is growing around community justice workers, no standardized, evidence-based community justice worker training model exists. The taskforce will address this gap, bringing together experts from many fields, including legal aid, education, technology, and government. Drawing from best practices from the adult learning and workforce training spaces, the taskforce will develop evidence-based standards tailored to community justice workers’ unique role. The taskforce will also develop a comprehensive set of resources and tools for training providers, including curriculum materials, assessment tools, and professional development opportunities.
"We are thrilled to partner with Ascendium to address this critical gap in community justice worker training," said Nikole Nelson, CEO at Frontline Justice. "Community justice workers are key to increasing access to justice for historically underserved people and communities.”
"Ascendium is proud to support this important initiative," said Ascendium’s General Counsel, Rebecca Rapp. “Ascendium is committed to removing barriers to postsecondary education and employment, including legal ones. The taskforce will advance both commitments by creating high-quality, evidence-based training standards to equip a new cadre of people to help with legal needs that far too often go unmet and pose significant barriers to people’s education, employment, and quality of life.”
The taskforce marks a significant step forward in the ongoing effort to build a more just and equitable society. In collaboration with Ascendium, Frontline Justice is committed to creating a national network of well-trained and highly qualified community justice workers equipped to provide accessible and affordable legal assistance to all Americans, particularly those who cannot currently access it.
About Frontline Justice
Justice empowers a new class of legal helpers known as community justice workers. These individuals provide a scalable solution to the civil access to justice crisis by assisting people in resolving their legal challenges. Recruited from trusted community roles—such as social workers, librarians, teachers, counselors, and faith leaders—justice workers are often cross-trained and equipped to guide others in using the law to address critical, life-altering civil legal needs.
Frontline Justice is an initiative of the Office of American Possibilities and a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. To learn more, visit www.frontlinejustice.org.
About Ascendium
Ascendium is committed to making education and training after high school a reality for learners from low-income backgrounds. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, it funds initiatives across the U.S. that help learners from low-income backgrounds achieve upward mobility; provide student and employee success solutions to colleges and businesses; invest in education-focused innovations to improve learner outcomes; and provide information, tools, and counseling to help millions of borrowers successfully repay their federal student loans. While we have many roles, we have one goal — elevating opportunity by creating a world where everyone can rise to their highest potential. To learn more, visit ascendiumeducation.org.