November 5, 2007 | Vol. XI, Issue 12

Applications Available for New Voices Fellowships for 3Ls

New Voices, inaugurated in 1999, is a national leadership development program that helps nonprofit organizations recruit or retain innovative, new talent. It awards salary-support grants to small nonprofits demonstrating a commitment to cultivating and strengthening the leadership potential of creative and diverse "new voices" in the field. Applicants write proposals with/through a legal services agency for approval.

During the next two grant cycles, New Voices will focus on addressing needs, solving problems, and defending human rights related to the impact on the Gulf Coast of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

More information and detailed application instructions can be found at newvoices.aed.org/home.html.

An example of a legal agency seeking a New Voices Fellow follows below.

Mississippi Center for Justice New Voices Fellowship
The Mississippi Center for Justice is looking for a candidate to apply for a New Voices Fellowship in this funding cycle.

Fellowship description: Mississippi Center for Justice is looking for an applicant that would focus on the intersection of traditional civil rights issues and emerging issues around new immigrants on the Mississippi gulf coast.

The fellow would apply a racial lens to the recovery in Mississippi - with specific emphasis on building bridges between African-American, Vietnamese and Latino communities. Depending on what areas the fellow is interested in, the fellowship could be fine tuned along the lines of employment, community economic development, etc. The fellow would work with a broad range of advocacy tools, including legal advocacy, policy advocacy, community organizing, media advocacy, and community leadership.

To apply: For more information, please contact Bonnie at ballen@lawrenewal.org or John Jopling at jjopling@mscenterforjustice.org and send resumes and cover letters to John at the MS Center for Justice, 974 Division St., Biloxi, MS 39530.

About MCJ: The Mississippi Center for Justice (MCJ) was established in June 2002 as a nonprofit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice. Its founding responded to an urgent need to re-establish in-state advocacy on behalf of low-income people and communities of color. Supported and staffed by civil rights advocates, attorneys, social service advocates and others, MCJ is committed to developing and pursuing strategies that combat discrimination and poverty in Mississippi.

Since its beginnings, MCJ has advanced social justice in Mississippi by:

• preventing 65,000 poor and disabled Mississippians (PLADS)from losing healthcare;
• dismantling a Jim Crow-era school board election system in the Mississippi Delta;
• ending the torture of juveniles in the state's training schools, successfully fighting for their right to counsel, and helping pass sweeping juvenile justice reform;
• attacking predatory lending practices in the migrant poultryworker community;
• preventing the funneling of children from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse by teaching grassroots community organizers and defense attorneys to navigate the state's convoluted juvenile justice system; and
• facilitating development of a comprehensive strategy to eliminate poverty by economic justice advocates from across the Deep South.

More information about The Mississippi Center for Justice can be found at http://www.mscenterforjustice.org/.

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