Deadline: 20 February 2017
Applications are open for The Assistance for the Development of Afghan Legal Access and Transparency (ADALAT) “Practical Legal Action and Clinical Education (PLACE) Grants Program” to support improvement in quality and access to legal education.
PLACE is designed to serve private university law faculties by tapping into their significant potential for better preparing law graduates to assist and enhance diverse communities to access justice across Afghanistan.
Program Activities
- Offer opportunities for practical legal education, on a gender balanced basis, to law and sharia students attending private universities
- Improve students’ practical skills including interviewing, investigating, negotiating, lawyer-client relationship, research, writing, strategic analysis, and advocacy
- Increase access to legal advice and services through student-run, professor and attorney-supervised legal clinics
- Supplement the teaching of legal theory and doctrine through effective means of delivering legal services and turning theory into action
- Improve the ability of law and sharia graduates to offer meaningful legal assistance soon after graduation
- Offer opportunities to law and sharia students to witness the impact of law in the daily lives of citizens, including opportunities to witness judges, prosecutors, government officials and police apply the law on a day to day basis
- Offer opportunities to participate in, and receive academic credit for, competitive moot court programs
- Ensure that practical legal education, through law clinics and practice-oriented law courses, becomes permanently integrated into law and sharia curricula
- Enhance capacity of professor/attorney-supervised legal clinics on Clinical Legal Education
Funding Information
Checchi anticipates funding several grants between $75,000 and $150,000 for each grant program.
Program Activities
- Designing practical skills pre-clinic courses and adding them to an approved curriculum
- Preparing instructors to teach practical legal skills
- Teaching law clinic pre-requisite courses
- Operating a law clinic
- Evaluating program performance
- Supporting the securing of regulatory approvals for “true” clinics
Eligibility Criteria
Eligibility requirements for grant applicants are as follows:
- 3-year operating history of law and/or sharia faculty.
- At least 100 students enrolled during the preceding year in the law and/or sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) faculties.
- At least 50% of the law or sharia teaching faculty must be permanent, or full-time.
- At least one on-going academic publication affiliated with the university.
- Must meet the objectives of ADALAT listed in Section I.
- Proposal must include expected outcomes and results consistent with and linked to ADALAT’s objectives including an approach to gender integration.
- Must be registered as a legal entity in Afghanistan.
- Must receive vetting eligibility from the USAID Kabul Vetting Support Unit for the period of the grant agreement.
- Must agree to follow USAID Multi-Tier-Monitoring requirements for remote activity verification including possible use of third party monitors.
- Must have a DUNS number and be registered in the System for Awards Management (SAM).
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted via email at the address given on the website.
Eligible Country: Afghanistan
For more information, please visit USAID-Afghanistan.