The Austin Bar Foundation is proud to annouce this year’s grant recipients! A total of $27,500 in grants were awarded to seven community organizations that provide community service. These grants are made possible by your generous contributions at the Austin Bar Foundation’s annual Gala. The 2024 Gala raised more than $234,000.
Austin Community Radio Inc.
“Jury Duty Community Forum”
Amount awarded: $5,000
Jury trials are an essential part of the justice system. The belief that jury trials are fair and impartial is being tested in today’s environment. The forum will allow various parts of the community to discuss the importance of jury service.
Catholic Charities of Central Texas
“Expanding Immigrant Legal Aid with Department of Justice-Accredited Representatives”
Amount Awarded: $3,000
With large groups of migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border, the need for compassionate, affordable legal services has never been more important. The Immigration Legal Services program at Catholic Charities of Central Texas is receiving increased requests for services. Grant funding will support the training of our legal assistants to become Department of Justice-accredited representatives – legal professionals who can practice immigration law after passing an extensive accreditation process. Through this initiative, we will expand legal services in Travis County by training and applying for at least two of our legal assistants to become DOJ-accredited representatives.
Lone Star Justice Alliance
“Just Sentencing”
Amount Awarded: $5,000
Lone Star Justice Alliance (LSJA) believes that children and young adults should be held accountable for misconduct in developmentally appropriate ways that consider their age, social determinants of health, and emotional maturity. Additionally, the agency is committed to the principle that every young person deserves access to excellent and effective representation, regardless of their background or situation. To that end, LSJA provides direct strategic litigation on behalf of children and youth who were tried in the adult criminal legal system and given extremely long prison sentences, particularly those sentenced to life without parole. This includes working with survivors of abuse and human trafficking who are charged with the crimes of their abusers to achieve clemency or reduced sentences. LSJA also seals the juvenile records of eligible clients and trains young defense attorneys to better represent justice-involved youth.
LSJA staff litigators work on a small number of cases to ensure each unique case receives the proper amount of attention and time necessary to bring justice to clients. Funds from the Austin Bar Foundation will be used specifically to provide pro-bono legal services to clients impacted by abuse, trafficking, inadequate representation, and complex trauma.
Youth Justice Alliance
“Making Justice Accessible Conference”
Amount Awarded: $3,600
This is a proposed event at the Thompson Conference Center on the UT campus. It mimics the Making Justice Accessible Conference put on by the Academy of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The funding will cover space rental, lunch, and technology needs to serve about 120 people. The conference will be cohosted by The University of Texas chapter of the Youth Justice Alliance and the Minority Women Pursuing Law organization at UT.
CASA of Travis County
“CAPE Workshop for CASA Volunteers and Staff”
Amount Awarded: $5,000
CAPE stands for Cultivating Anti-Racism through Personal Exploration and is required of all staff and offered to volunteers. The CAPE Workshop is a 13.5-hour curriculum designed to give participants an opportunity to examine racism, how it’s embedded in society, and to empower them to use the tools learned to cultivate anti-racism and anti-racist practices in the lives of the children they serve in the foster-care system. The Workshop will ensure that CASA volunteers and staff who make quarterly reports to the child-welfare courts do not propagate racist practices in the Travis County courts. The funds will be used to support the salaries of the workshop trainers for one cycle of the CAPE Workshop in 2024.
Seedling Foundation
“Mentoring Kids Who Have an Incarcerated Parent”
Amount Awarded: $5,000
This project will facilitate and expand the availability of services for children impacted by the legal system. Seedling provides school-based mentoring for children impacted by parental incarceration in the greater Austin area. Seedling was founded by Austin attorney John Blazier and began providing mentoring in the 2005-06 school year. The funds will be used to hire part-time staff to interview prospective mentors for the 2024-25 school year. Having interviewers is important to mitigate the risk to students.
The Center for Child Protection
“Facility Service Dog Program for Therapy and Court Accompaniment”
Amount Awarded: $5,000
The Center for Child Protection is expanding its successful Facility Dog Program with training and care of two additional dogs, empowering more children to testify against their abusers in court and seek healing through therapy – assisted by a furry companion that helps them feel safe. While child abuse affects all children, 82 percent of the families the Center for Child Protection served in 2023 were low-income, and they were disproportionately from minority communities. Of the 1,767 Travis County children the center served in 2023, 63 percent were Hispanic and 14 percent were Black. Children who have been abused experience significantly higher rates of numerous social and health problems.
The center’s highly trained facility dog, used by the entire Travis County Child Protection Team, is a key component to breaking the generational cycle of child abuse in our community.
The mission of the Austin Bar Foundation is to expand the provision of legal-related charitable and educational programs in Central Texas. The Foundation administers the Adoption Day Fund, the Denise Hyde Scholarship Fund, the Justice Mack Kidd Fund, the LGBTQ+ Scholarship Fund, and the Hon. Lora J. Livingston Fellowship Fund. You can donate to support any of these funds. You can also make general donations.
Please also consider becoming a Fellow, Sustaining Fellow, or Lifetime Fellow.
Visit austinbar.org to learn more. All donations to the Austin Bar Foundation are tax-deductible.