new adventures of the niqabi intern

Today was my first day at my internship with the Northwest Women's Law Center. Al-hamdulillah, it went very well. Everybody I met was very friendly and helpful. It appears that the entire staff and volunteers at this time are women. I'll be able to offer salat in the office of one of the staff attorneys while she's taking her lunch break. I'll be working on three major projects. The first is to spend 3 1/2 hours a week answering phones at their self-help line. This involves taking calls from women who need legal help and telling them what the law is in regard to their situation and giving them referrals to attorneys or agencies that may be able to help them, or sending them information so they can represent themselves if they can't afford a lawyer. The second project is to bring the referral agency database up to date. This will involve contacting the agencies and attorneys to see if they still wish to be listed and then entering the new information in the database. The third project is the most substantive. The help line volunteers work from notebooks that explain the law. A lot of this information hasn't been updated in awhile. I get to pick one section, research the current law, and write up a memo that explains it in layman's terms so that it can be read out or sent to the women that call the helpline. I will probably be doing something related to employment discrimination, inshallah. Tomorrow, I'll be accompanying my supervisor to two meetings, one about access to justice and using non-lawyers in legal service agencies, and the other of a new non-profit organization that provides Court Appointed Special Advocates to children whose parents have been found unfit. Inshallah, it'll be a chance to learn something and meet some people.