Pivot launches new legal advocacy projectThanks to the generous support of the Law Foundation of BC, we are launching our Poverty Law Strategic Action Project. Since December, we have been getting ready to kick off thisnew project, which is going to allow us to deepen our relationships with legal advocacy organizations and achieve widespread social benefits for people living in poverty in theDowntown Eastside and beyond.When the Provincial Government cut funding for legal aid by 40% in 2002, poverty law services were eliminated. In the years since the cuts, a network of highly skilled andtremendously busy legal advocates has developed in response to the huge level of unmet need for poverty law services. Although these services are extremely important, there are limits to what they can provide. In some cases, advocates cannot get a resolution for their client because they cannot provide services such as representation in court or judicial review of decisions. In other cases, resolving an issue for one client doesn’t result in the kind of policy or practice change that would stop or slow the flow of similar cases.The goal of our project is to work with advocates and legal advice clinics to identify cases that have the potential to address the root causes of legal problems faced by significantnumbers of people living in poverty. The next step will be to bring those cases forward in an attempt to make change, not just for the individual client, but for everyone impactedby the policy or practice in question. This project has the potential to yield some high impact social change. We are looking forward to connecting with new allies, strengthening the poverty law sector in BC and seeing where this project takes us over the coming year.