The Legal Empowerment Fund, supported by foundations such as Mott and Hewlett, has launched its inaugural open call for proposals. The Fund is a 10-year, multimillion-dollar effort at the Fund for Global Human Rights to give frontline activists and grassroots groups the support they need to close the global justice gap.

The LEF will consider grant applications from grassroots groups doing legal empowerment work for up to 24 months of general support (core funding). In its first funding cycle, the LEF will identify and support grassroots legal empowerment groups that have had difficulty accessing traditional opportunities for funding.

In an effort to make the grant process more accessible, the Fund will accept applications either written or in video or audio format to be submitted in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Arabic.

What is legal empowerment?

Legal empowerment combines law with organizing to build power among people affected by injustice. When people are able to know, use, and shape the law, they can access justice. With the law on their side, people are able seek peaceful solutions, protect the lands and resources they depend on, and hold their governments and other perpetrators of justice to account.

What is the LEF?

The LEF is a new initiative to provide urgently needed, long-term support to grassroots justice defenders and organizations that are fighting to help people understand and claim their rights while shaping the laws that govern them.

Over 10 years, the LEF aims to raise $100 million to strengthen the people-centered justice movement. The LEF will support visionary grassroots justice groups with renewable and long-term core funding, offering space for experimentation and access to a global network of donors, advocates, and allies.

For more information on the LEF’s first round of funding, visit globalhumanrights.org/legal-empowerment.