George J. Borteh
28 August 2008
Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) has acquired a new building to be used as permanent headquarters. Located on Lynch Street, down town Monrovia, authorities of AFELL over the weekend head an elaborate program to mark official rehabilitation of the building, to change it into a modern complex.
Over the week, AFELL launched an official "Renovation Fund Drive" where the association's President, Attorney Deweh Gray gave an overview of activities of AFELL, highlighting the past, present and the future.
As part of what is in the making, she said institution AFELL is planning to open sub-offices into the rural parts of the country, to enable to make far-reaching impact on the lives of those it is catering to.
Speaking further at the official program to mark the launch of a Fund Drive for the renovation of the proposed Headquarters on 77 Lynch Street in Monrovia on August 23, 2008, Attorney Gray said the opening of offices in the rural Liberia will bring hope to the hopeless, in terms of the institution's access to what she called 'Justice Programs'.
According to her, AFELL intends to set up a resource center that will track the institution's activities from inception, where women and children can read, and where schoolchildren can research AFELL's works and more female can join AFELL.
Speaking further, the Liberian female lawyer also stressed that the renovation of its new Headquarters will help school going children to conduct research work already in progress to harmonize existing laws in the jurisdiction of AFELL, with international conventions on women's rights to which Liberia is a signatory.
"We intend for this 'research and resource center to be the nerve center of the Association because our clients need to know what the laws say how it affects their lives and how they can avail themselves of the opportunities available to access justice". She said.
She added that Liberian women and children needed to be assured access to justice and used the occasion to thanked parents and donors their support for the years stressing that said support made AFELL strong in its resolve to succeed.
"We remained steadfast in 1994, we will continue to be persistent and will not give up. We are facing a great challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it.
Our goal is to move into this place(Proposed Headquarters), next June 2009 and with God on our side, we are convince that next year we will be inviting you again to thus very same place to dedicate and open this building to the public', Atty. Gray.
Explaining the confrontations the association encountered since its founding, she said "Out of the one room walls of the LNBA, for fourteen years, AFELL has been able to cater to the needs of women an children, lobbying aggressively and in one instance for almost nine years for changes to laws that had adverse effects on the rights of women and children."
The AFELL boss indicated: "The road has not always been easy for this group of women providing voluntary pro bono legal services to persons in need".
"Our work in advocacy, sensitization, lobbying, awareness, medication and legal counsel over these years has taken us to all of the fifteen counties of Liberia."
Madam Gray said the data base shows that the medication and legal counselling services through the legal and clinic have risen with the issue of "persistent non support of minor children and spouses carrying the highest percentage of cases heard."
This, she said, means that something has to be done to curtail "these kinds of behaviour."
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