Making a difference, one project at a time.

AuthorSeaman, Brian
PositionFeature Report on Canadian Lawyers Abroad

The path from law school through the grind of racking up billable hours to finally seeing your name on a brass plate on an oak door is not for everyone. Some lawyers, upon being called to the Bar, feel inspired instead to pursue another calling, one that will take them to the far reaches of the globe to make a positive difference in the lives of others in ways their peers back home could hardly imagine. One young lawyer who did just that is Amanda Dodge. Amanda returned home to Regina in late March after spending over six months in the African nation of Namibia, where she worked for a public interest legal advocacy group called the Legal Assistance Centre.

Recovering from a blood clot in one of her legs that was brought on by too many hours of cramped sitting in an airline seat, Amanda explained what took her from a quiet life on the Prairies to a job in a nation with one of the highest rates of murder and sexual assault in the world. "I see law as a tool for social change and I wanted to make a difference in some way in the lives of the people of Africa," she explained. Amanda remembered listening to a University of Saskatchewan alumnus (now a law professor at the university) talk about international development work for lawyers in the developing world and, after doing some research, she settled on Africa as a place most in need of humanitarian and legal advocacy work. So, shortly after being admitted to the Saskatchewan Bar, Amanda applied to the International Development Internship Program jointly facilitated and funded by the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) and Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs. Since she'd expressed an interest in Africa when she made her application, she was ecstatic when she learned of her assignment to a non-governmental organization (NGO) that was doing public interest law in Namibia.

Namibia is a sparsely populated country located in southwest Africa, with fewer than two million people living in an area three and a half times the size of Great Britain. It is a land of stark contrasts both in terms of geography and the social reality of its people. The Namib Desert, which runs along the length of the country's Atlantic coast and covers an area roughly the size of Nova Scotia, is an arid, surreal landscape containing the world's highest sand dunes, some of which soar to over 300 metres. As the sand gives way to the plains and bush further inland, the visitor enters one of the richest and most diverse habitats in...

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