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The Illinois Bar Foundation Board of Directors awarded $215,702 to fifty-three not-for-profit organizations. The details follow.

Administer Justice East Dundee Kane and McHenry County
$1,000 to support Project Access, to provide meaningful access to justice to low-income residents of Kane and McHenry County. Administer Justice promotes justice through a comprehensive program of educational outreach, legal assistance, financial counseling and conflict resolution services.

Between Friends Chicago Cook County
$3,500 for its Court Advocacy Program. The Court Advocacy program serves approximately 600 English, Spanish and Polish speaking clients in Chicago and the Northwest suburbs. Formerly known as Friends of Battered Women and Their Children, Between Friends' free legal clinic offers legal assistance and support to victims of domestic violence with family law issues.

BUILD, Inc. Chicago Cook County
$2,500 for Project BUILD's post release case management services. Project BUILD works with youth released from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in order to reduce recidivism.

Cabrini-Green Legal Aid Clinic Chicago Cook County
$7,000 for its volunteer program. CGLA provides free legal services in the areas of housing, family and criminal law to low-income people in the City of Chicago.

CARPLS Chicago Cook County
$15,000 for a part time hotline attorney. CARPLS legal assistance hotline provides low income clients with immediate access to legal advice, referrals and brief services and streamlines the legal aid system in Cook County. CARPLS attorneys resolve more than 65% of its cases without the need for further referral, alleviating the burden on traditional legal aid programs designed to provide in-court representation.

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) Chicago Cook County
$2,000 to strengthen the management of community-based immigration legal services agencies. CLINIC will provide training to the people on the front lines of legal services programs who are in need of professional education, thereby increasing the capacity of community-based programs serving indigent and low-income immigrants and refugees seeking family reunification, citizenship, and protection from persecution and violence.

Centro Romero Chicago Cook County
$3,500 for its Latin American Legal Assistance Services Program. Centro Romero is a community-based organization on Chicago's North Side that serves Spanish-speaking immigrants and refugees. The legal services program's primary goal is to assist persons in becoming Lawful Permanent Residents and United States citizens.

Champaign-Urbana Area Project Champaign Champaign County
$3,000 for the Champaign Schools Peer Jury Initiative. The Peer Jury program seeks to reduce the number of juvenile delinquency cases in Champaign County.

Chicago Coalition for the Homeless Chicago Cook County
$6,000 for the Law Project's Educational Rights Initiative. The Educational Rights Initiative works to ensure that homeless children and teens are not wrongly barred from enrolling in and attending public school.

Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Chicago Cook County
$5,000 for the Community Economic Development Law Project's Choose to Own Program. Applying Housing Choice Vouchers – formerly Section 8 certificates – to conventional mortgage payments, people who are working but still qualify for governmental rental subsidies, are able to buy their own homes. CEDLP pro bono lawyers represent these new home owners at the closing.

Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers Chicago Cook County
$5,000 for its On-Site Legal Services Program. CLAIM will provide on-site legal services on family law matters to mothers in jail and prison and present classes on child custody and foster care to enable them to make sound decisions in their children's best interest.

Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation Chicago Cook County
$5,000 toward a Coordinator of its Clinic Program. The CVLS Clinic Program gives clients immediate, face-to-face contact in their own neighborhoods with pro-bono attorneys. The Coordinator will allow CVLS clinics to provide increased and better service, more volunteers, and a stronger legal presence in low-income Chicago communities.

Chicago Workers' Collaborative/St. Pius V Parish Chicago Cook, Kane, DuPage County
$4,000 for its collaborative legal clinic to train and coordinate a network of volunteers to conduct outreach and motivate low-wage immigrant workers to access free employment-related legal services.

Community Extension Project LaGrange Cook County
$5,000 for its Outreach Program. Through the Outreach Program, CEP collaborates with the local police departments and courts, providing opportunities for youth to complete court- and police-mandated community service.

Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago Statewide
$5,000 for its Equal Justice Under Law Institute. These funds will be used to convene a two-day Institute to which teachers and legal experts will come together in a training on the use of a recent US Supreme Court case and its relevance to the study of American government as a way of helping their students gain unique insights into the US Constitution.

Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)
$20,350 TO CASA PROGRAMS in DuPage, Franklin, Fulton, Jersey, Kankakee, Lake, Lee/Carroll, McHenry, and Will Counties. CASAs are trained community volunteers appointed by a juvenile or family court judge to speak for the best interests of abused and neglected children who are brought before the court.

The Crisis Center for South Suburbia Tinley Park Cook County
$3,000 for its Court Advocacy Program. The purpose of the program is to assist victims of domestic violence with the process of obtaining Orders of Protection in the 5th and 6th Municipal District Courts locates in Bridgeview and Markham.

Equip for Equality Chicago Statewide
$1,500 for its Special Education Clinic, a comprehensive advocacy service for Chicago-area parents of children with disabilities. Equip for Equality strives to advance the human and civil rights of people with disabilities in Illinois, providing self-advocacy assistance, legal services, education, and public policy initiatives.

Family Rescue Chicago Cook County
$3,000 for its Court Advocacy Program. The Court Advocacy Program provides legal advocacy and assistance in obtaining Orders of Protection to 1,000 victims of domestic violence and provides roll call trainings to the Chicago Police Department officers in the districts in serves.

First Defense Legal Aid Chicago Cook County
$4,000 for legal services. First Defense is the first and only program in the country offering around the clock, free legal representation to anyone in Chicago arrested or questioned by law enforcement agents. Attorneys are dispatched to protect a client's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and Sixth Amendment right to counsel until a public defender can be appointed.

Genesis House Chicago Cook County
$5,000 to fund its Court Program. The Court Advocacy staff encourages judges to mandate women incarcerated for prostitution to attend Genesis House in an effort to secure them the best possible options for effective rehabilitation. Genesis House reaches thousands of women involved in prostitution each year and gives them the rehabilitative services they need to permanently exit prostitution and the criminal justice system. These valuable resources help women in prostitution leave abusive lifestyles that often lead to brutality, disease and sexual assault.

Illinois Channel Springfield Statewide
$5,000 to extend its legal coverage of issues that remain largely uncovered by the media. The Illinois Channel uses television coverage to broaden the public's access to the workings of the legal system. It is the only television program existing in the state of Illinois.

Illinois Judges Association Chicago Statewide
$8,750 for its Judicial Intern Opportunity Program. This program offers a $1,500 stipend for an 8-week summer internship for first or second year minority or financially disadvantaged law students who want to do legal research and writing for state judges in Illinois.

Illinois Legal Aid Online Chicago Statewide
$10,000 for a Legal Content Coordinator. Illinois Legal Aid Online provides comprehensive, Internet-based resources for legal aid advocates, pro bono lawyers and members of the public seeking legal information.

Immigration Project, Inc. Granite City Southern Illinois
$5,000 to hire an additional staff attorney. The Immigration Project provides immigration-related legal and informational services to immigrants and refugees, their families, and the government and social service providers who work with them throughout the eighty-six southern most counties in Illinois. The Immigration Project is the only Board of Immigration Appeals accredited non-profit immigration service agency south of the Chicago Metropolitan region.

Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation Chicago Cook County
$1,000 for its Court Improvement Initiative. The Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation offers a variety of services from the business, civic, and social services communities to help guide trouble children and families in Cook County to help create stable and healthy lives.

Juvenile Court Advocates (JCA) of Hancock County Carthage Hancock County
$1,120 for program expenses. JCA (formerly CASA of Hancock County) represents the best interest of abused and neglected children by working with all parties and agencies involved with the juvenile to create permanency.

Knox County Teen Court Galesburg Knox County
$3,000 for its Diversion program, which seeks to lower the risk of juvenile offender recidivism by focusing on youth accountability and development of self-esteem, motivating self-improvement, and developing a healthy attitude toward authority figures.

Latinos Progresando Chicago Cook County
$5,000 to support its legal services program, which seeks to serve legal immigrants through high quality, low-cost legal immigration services. In addition, the Pilsen-based Latinos Progresando also offers community education and engagement and advocacy around policy that affects immigrants.

Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois Chicago Statewide
$10,000 to jointly sponsor the Legal Aid Advocates Conference. Held in October, the Conference gathered legal aid attorneys from across the state for two days of programming on legal issues relevant to low income families.

Life Span Chicago Cook County
$3,750 for its Center for Legal Services. Staff Attorneys provide civil legal services, including advice and representation, to battered women in order of protection, custody and visitation, removal and divorce cases. Last year, twelve staff attorneys provided more than 17,000 hours of legal services to clients.

Long Term Prisoner Policy Project Chicago Statewide
$5,000 for its C# Inmates Representation Project. The Project will recruit and train lawyers to represent the 320 C# inmates at their annual parole hearings and present their cases to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. These inmates who received indeterminate sentences in the 1970s are now elderly and have served more time in prison than most people who were given determinate terms for the same offences in the 1970s and 19802.

Midwest Workers Association Chicago Cook County
$5,000 for its legal advice, education and advocacy benefit development program. MWA is a grassroots organization providing mutual aid and advocacy for and by the lowest-paid workers of Chicago.

Mutual Ground, Inc. Aurora Kane & Kendall Counties
$5,000 for its Domestic Violence Court Advocacy Project. Bi-lingual court advocates provide domestic violence victims assistance during civil and criminal processes at the Aurora Branch Court, the Kane County Judicial Center and the Kendall County Courthouse.

Neighborhood Restorative Justice Institute Chicago Cook County
$3,000 for its Mediation Project. Neighborhood Restorative Justice Institute provides restorative justice by involving the victim, offender and community in the problem solving process.

Peer Court, Inc. Danville Vermilion County
$3,000 for its Street Law Workshops. Street Law Workshops offers youth offenders an interactive, educational setting to aid in reducing the rate of recidivism by focusing on conflict resolution, behavior management and listening skills. The mission of Peer Court is to provide a juvenile diversion program to offer positive alternatives to formal court proceedings for first time offenders thereby reducing the caseload in the juvenile court system.

Perry-Jackson County Child Advocacy Center Pinckneyville Perry and Jackson Counties
$5,000 to hire a part-time advocate. The Perry-Jackson County Child Advocacy Center seeks to create a comprehensive response to child sexual and physical abuse allegations in a safe and child-focused setting while keeping families informed on the status of their case and providing them with education and advocacy services.

Phoenix Crisis Center, Inc. Granite City Madison and Bond Counties
$2,232 for its Criminal Justice Advocacy Program. Phoenix Crisis Center offers criminal justice advocacy to victims to help them obtain orders of protection, understand their rights and engage successfully with the criminal justice system in order to empower them to lead safe and independent lives.

Public Interest Law Initiative Chicago Cook County
$3,000 for its Pro Bono Initiative program. Public Interest Law Initiative strives to provide equal access to justice through the creation of various opportunities for law students and lawyers to provide pro bono and public interest activities to low-income clients.

Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law Chicago Statewide
$4,000 for its ejustice program, a technology project that ensures the design and delivery of digital solutions to expand and improve the efficacy of legal aid offered directly to low-income individuals and families. The Shriver Center builds the capacity of lawyers and other advocates for clients in poverty by synthesizing legal advocacy, research and substantive and skill training and distributing such information through the Clearinghouse Review and its Poverty Law Library.

Special Education Advocacy Center Palatine Cook and collar counties
$4,000 to provide legal representation to low-income parents of children with disabilities seeking to obtain appropriate education and early intervention services for their children.

Uptown Peoples Law Center Chicago Cook County
$5,000 to support the activities of the Law Center. Uptown Peoples Law Center provides legal education to low-income people in Uptown s well as representation to prisoners. It is the only organization that regularly represents prisoners in Illinois and challenges their conditions of confinement.

Violence Prevention Center of Southwestern Illinois Belleville St. Clair/Monroe/Randolph
$2,500 to print brochures to increase public awareness of the Illinois Domestic Violence Act. The Violence prevention Center of Southwestern Illinois seeks to work towards the elimination of domestic violence. Its Court Advocacy Program provides services including crisis intervention, prevention programs, long-tern counseling, and emergency shelters to men, women, and children.

We The People Media Chicago Cook County
$5,000 for its publication of investigative reports. We The People Media seeks to remedy issues such as weak educational systems, high crime rates, and poor delivery of social services to low-income communities. Its flagship program, Residents' Journal, publishes reports that guard the rights of residents undergoing relocation due to demolition of public housing.

Youth Service Bureau of Rock Island County Moline Rock Island County
$3,000 for its teen court/peer justice program. The Peer Justice Program serves as an intervention program designed to increase accountability among teen offenders and to provide a mechanism for the early identification and referral of high-risk youth to appropriate treatment and competency development programs.

YWCA Evanston/North Shore Domestic Violence Services Lake County and North Shore
$1,000 for its legal advocacy program. Advocates assist victims of domestic violence in obtaining emergency and plenary orders, as well as providing related support services and facilitating access to legal assistance and representation.