I just wanted to provide a preview of an upcoming competition called JusticeMakers… which IBJ will be launching in the coming months. Stay tuned for more!

JusticeMakers is a global competition that sources and empowers innovators in criminal defense, while also publicizing and empowering the role of criminal legal aid within the larger human rights movement. JusticeMakers sparks hope among the pillars of the criminal justice community – hope that after a long struggle, IBJ and its partners are finally giving them the resources they need to affect change within their countries. Critical to the success of JusticeMakers is its ability to bring more prominence to the legal rights narrative. To that end, the competition will feature an online community that enables defenders, justice officials and other criminal defense stakeholders to add depth to the legal rights conversation, while collaborating to create new ventures.

The competition is set up to identify eight “heroes of criminal justice” who will receive seed funding to implement their initiatives locally. We will share their stories, aspirations and challenges and position these heroes as the face of the movement. Top ideas will also gain access to secondary capital markets through the IBJ’s partners.

Beyond its benefit for individual JusticeMakers and the larger legal rights movement, the competition also amplifies the impact of IBJ’s existing portfolio of criminal defense initiatives. JusticeMakers enables the cross-fertilization of participants’ ideas with those of IBJ’s program staff. It also provides a testing ground for criminal defense initiatives before they are brought to scale through IBJ’s in-country programming. JusticeMakers also serves to map initiatives within the criminal defense sector, pinpointing those areas where IBJ could be adding value. Finally, JusticeMakers helps source potential recruits for future country programs as IBJ takes its model to scale.