This past week has seen me visit Charlottetown, PE, and Fredericton, NB. The Community Legal Information Association of PEI in Charlottetown offers a number of standard PLE programs, including a legal information line, lawyer referral service, plain language publications, and legal classes and workshops, and has a significant focus on community development and close collaboration with others in the small and tightly-knit province it serves. In Charlottetown I also stumbled upon a related and exciting organization, the Cooper Institute, which coordinates highly interactive, low-income-friendly grassroots training academies—with PLE components—that develop community capacity for bringing social policy changes.
In Fredericton, I spent most of my time visiting the Public Legal Education and Information Service of New Brunswick. For a small PLE organization, PLEIS-NB produces an amazing number of plain language print and video materials and over the years has developed a focus on family violence issues. PLEIS also offers workshops in schools and for the general public, provides a family law information line, and manages a parenting education program for recently separated parents.
Both PLEIS (pronounced like “please”) and CLIA enjoy free (but tiny) office space provided in government office buildings by their respective provincial governments, and both operate in provinces with comparatively limited legal aid.
