Women's Legal Education and Action Fund Inc (LEAF)

Published purpose

Through this 42-month project, Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) will develop and put in place a promising practice of building sector capacity to prevent and respond to GBV through feminist strategic litigation, which will strengthen the GBV sector overall by moving towards broader changes to legislation, policies, and practices. It will utilize the expertise and address the needs of women, trans, and non-binary people who are experiencing GBV, particularly those who are Black, Indigenous, racialized, low income, disabled, and/or newcomers, as well as the people serving and advocating for them at national, provincial/territorial, and local levels across Canada, with representation of official language minority communities. To do so, the project will include an environmental scan of GBV sector organizations’ experiences within the legal system and legal cases and gather baseline data from participating organizations regarding their level of experience with and exposure to the legal system and feminist strategic litigation through survey and consultations. The data gathered will inform the nature and scope of workshops, programming materials, and resources LEAF will develop and deliver related to feminist strategic litigation, with a focus on national, provincial/territorial, and local level interventions. LEAF will also identify potential legal cases for partnership with one or more participating organizations at federal, provincial, and/or territorial levels, in order to increase their exposure to feminist strategic litigation. An external evaluator will measure and assess the impact of the promising practice as relates to participating organizations’ experience with and exposure to the legal system and feminist strategic litigation as well as capacity to become involved in litigation in future. Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), will assess and build out a final project logic model and theory of change for feminist strategic litigation, create an online repository of project findings, resources, and tools, and facilitate the building of a network of GBV organizations interested in feminist strategic litigation through shared participation in workshops, the development of a listserv/email for ongoing communications, and the facilitation of connections with other key stakeholders, in order to share information on the promising practice with others so that they may replicate it or expand upon it. With the Supplemental funds and extension provided in early 2026, LEAF will create an FSL communications toolkit and two in-depth case study resources to support GBV organizations in implementing the promising practice, create new trainings for lawyers interested in partnering on FSL work to support GBV organizations in implementing the promising practice, and further test the promising practice by providing new FSL involvement opportunities in cases to GBV organizations. Through this they will further advance Gender Equality.