Mira Szudek
Student: Mira Szudek, Gender and Social Justice Master's Program
Course: GSJ 501 Social Justice Workshop with Dr. Lise Gotell (Fall 2023)
Who was your community partner, and can you describe the project objectives?
Edmonton Community Legal Centre is a non-profit agency that provides free legal services to those in Edmonton and Northern Alberta. In their own words, ECLC provides free legal advice, advocacy, information, referral, and support when income poses a barrier to accessing justice and legal aid. The core values of ECLC are grounded in justice, community, accessibility, and accountability in Reconciliation. ECLC operates because of the commitment of volunteer lawyers and administrative support.
One project ECLC performs is the Public Legal Education Presentations. This is a partnership with Edmonton Public Libraries, where ECLC volunteers present legal education presentations concerning Immigration law, employment law, family law, and much more! The information on these presentations is curated by lawyers who have donated their time to outline the most important areas of the given jurisdiction of law. My role is to take this information (which is very detailed) and design the presentations so that the presentations are not only visually appealing but accessible in wording, font size, color scheme, and layout. In sum, my role is to take legal text and change or summarize the wording to be clear as well as interesting, with the goal of providing folks with information as to how procedures in this area work.
What was the biggest takeaway from your CSL placement?
My biggest takeaway from this CSL placement was that it is extremely important to not only provide folks with information about the law, but also that this information is not effective if folks don't completely understand how laws work within the Canadian justice system. Access and understanding are intricately tied to one another, and I would not have experienced it firsthand if not for my CSL placement.
How can you apply any newly gained knowledge/skills to your future endeavors (courses/employment/volunteering)?
Since I finished my official CSL in the Fall of 2023, I have continued to volunteer at ECLC each week in 2024. In continuing this work, I've felt incredibly fulfilled using my skills in a way that truly helps others. As a student in gender and social justice, I try to be an advocate in every part of my work, and I hope to continue with this passion for advocacy in pursuing studying law.