=Kentucky Equal Justice Center[[image:KEJC_color.gif width="108" height="135" align="right"]]=
===Advocacy and Partnership===
Kentucky Equal Justice Center (KEJC) is the new name for the Office of Kentucky Legal Services Programs. We are a non-profit poverty law advocacy and research center. We serve the state’s non-profit legal services community and low income families by:
* Monitoring and reporting on changes in poverty law
* Coordinating task forces of legal services attorneys and paralegals
* Contacting state and federal officials to comment on poverty law issues

In recent years, we also have launched:
* A Litigation Project to tackle high impact poverty law cases
* An Immigrant Rights Project to help low income immigrant families

We work with a wide variety of community partners.
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=News=
==KEJC welcomes new attorney==
We are delighted to report that **Zenaida Lockard** joined the Kentucky Equal Justice Center staff January 31 as our new Employment Law Attorney. Zenaida will carry out the Bluegrass Employment Law Launch (BELL) grant project funded by Public Welfare Foundation—including policy advocacy, coalition building and selected litigation. One special focus: misclassification of employees as independent contractors.

Zenaida is a 2006 graduate of U of L Brandeis School of Law, where she received a Brandeis Full Tuition Minority Scholarship and the 2006 Samuel L. Greenbaum Public service award for the most public service hours in her class. During law school, she worked at the Louisville Legal Aid Society as a Housing Paralegal and Intake Specialist. KEJC lured Zenaida back to Kentucky from Philadelphia, where she served as an assistant public defender for three years. The transition to employment law? One of her references was a judge who made the very same transition and said “no problem.”

Zenaida will work from Louisville. Right now she’s using Senior Staff Attorney Anne Marie’s office space in the Starks Building, which KEJC shares with former Legal Aid attorneys Robert Smith and Mary Cartwright. The whole group is looking for bigger digs in the same building. We’ll publish updated contact information when that’s done. In the meantime: [[mailto:zlockard@kyequaljustice.org|zlockard@kyequaljustice.org]].
==Help us keep going—and growing!==
<span style="color: #427294;">**“Advocacy and partnership.”** </span>We’ve been living it since 1976. Many of our friends helped us celebrate our 30th anniversary—now almost three years ago. It’s time to get back in touch, tell you what we’re doing and invite you to be part of our work. We face tough times like all nonprofits—just when there’s more to do than ever—but we’re still going and even growing. We’re fighting the good fight for low income Kentuckians in the courts, the legislature and before government agencies—and getting results. Get the details in our holiday letter:
[[file:KEJC holiday letter 2009 letter.pdf]]

==Welcome new Board members==
**October 16, 2009 --** Kentucky Equal Justice Center welcomes two new Board members this fall. New Community Member Bob Rodriguez was a founding volunteer of Maxwell Street Legal Clinic and continues to volunteer there weekly. New Client Member Maynard George also has a Maxwell Street connection: he and his family became U.S. citizens this summer with help from our Citizenship Project. Maynard came to the U.S. from Sierra Leone. Maxwell Street Legal Clinic officially became part of Kentucky Equal Justice Center in January, 2008.

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===Kentucky Voices for Health releases "Why It Matters"===
**September 3, 2009** -- The new coalition Kentucky Voices for Health has released a new paper to underscore the need for health care reform, **"Expanding Health Coverage in Kentucky: Why it Matters."** The paper offers background data on uninsured Kentuckians and families struggling with health care costs. A couple of surprising findings:

**One in three Kentuckians has public health coverage:** One in three Kentuckians (34%), receives health coverage from a publicly funded source, such as Medicaid, Medicare, or the Kentucky Employees Health Plan, which covers all local school district employees and active and retired state employees. And that doesn't count federal employees or the military
**Vast majority of uninsured in Kentucky are employed:** The vast majority (83%) of uninsured Kentuckians are low-income workers whose jobs generally do not provide coverage. Only 16% of Kentucky’s uninsured residents live in households where no one works, compared to 19% nationally.

Kentucky Equal Justice Center is a member of Kentucky Voices for Health. KEJC Director Rich Seckel chaired the coalition's policy committee and helped launch the coalition's publications. See the full "Why It Matters" report here:
[[file:KVH-Expanding Health Coverage-WEB.pdf]].