Join us to better understand the unmet civil legal needs of low-income Cook County residents.
For the first time in their organization’s history, Legal Aid Chicago has released a Community Legal Needs Assessment. They listened to a wide ambit of internal and external stakeholders, community members, and researchers in order to make evidence-based strategic decisions about how and where to deploy their resources. Legal Aid Chicago’s Kulsum Ameji and Barbara Bertini will present their findings and strategize with us on how we can all move forward.
Read the Report:
Moving Forward Together: Community Legal Needs Assessment 2022
Released March 2024
This virtual event is free to attend and open to the public.
You must register to attend. A link to participate in the program virtually will be sent to registrants 24 hours in advance.
This event is part of our Chicago in Focus lecture series, which seeks to highlight and explore the most important issues facing Chicagoans today.
About the Speakers
Kulsum Ameji is a Senior Attorney specializing in Community Engagement at Legal Aid Chicago. After graduating with honors from Smith College, she attended DePaul College of Law. Kulsum has more than two decades of experience connecting communities, issues, and ideas in imaginative ways. Kulsum is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her work from the Chicago Foundation for Women, KANWIN, the Community Renewal Society, Legal Aid Chicago, the University of Chicago’s Civic Leadership Academy, and others. She is passionate about cross-sectoral collaboration, creative problem-solving, and user-centered systems-thinking. She is the Co-Author of Moving Forward Together, Legal Aid Chicago’s recent Community Legal Needs Assessment.
Barbara Bertini is the Associate Director of Pro Bono & Community Partnerships at Legal Aid Chicago. She joined Legal Aid Chicago in December 2021 to focus on enhancing and expanding the organization’s presence in the Cook County community. She has experience as a government attorney, a criminal prosecutor, and a specialist in criminal records relief. This experience allows Barbara to provide substantive legal trainings to service providers and community members and manages the agency’s partnerships with organizational allies. Barbara received both her law degree and her undergraduate degree in criminal justice from Northeastern University in Boston.
Past Chicago in Focus Programs
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Let’s discuss clean water access and Black maternal health. Our featured speaker is Chakena D. Perry, Senior Policy Advocate for the Safe Water Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Chicago’s Migrant Crisis
Featured speakers Johannes Favi, Deputy Director of the Illinois Community for Displaced Immigrants, and Alisa Bhachu, CEO of the Chicago Refugee Coalition, discuss the current situation of new asylum seekers arriving in Chicago and how local organizations are helping.