As the COVID-19 pandemic persists and our community continues to feel its lasting effects, the CWBA Legal Services Committee has remained focused on fundraising for local charities through its CWBA Gives Back Initiative. The Committee is excited to share its current fundraising focus: the Girls Athletic Leadership School (GALS) Denver. The Committee welcomes the support of CWBA members during this brief fundraising period, which ends on March 11, 2022.
Background
In response to the pandemic, the CWBA’s Board of Directors voted to include charitable giving in the 2020-21 budget. The Legal Services Committee used these resources to create the CWBA Gives Back Initiative. That year, the Committee allocated $4,000 in matching funds across four separate charitable causes championed by CWBA members.
The Colorado Poverty Law Project provides eviction and housing clinics. The pandemic put immediate pressure on Colorado renters facing eviction and housing crises, so we focused its first quarterly fundraising effort on addressing this need.
The Initiative is a Denver-based non-profit organization that advocates for persons with disabilities who have experienced abuse. In the fall of 2020, we kicked off this fundraising effort by hosting an Abuse and Disability 101 training for CWBA members.
Metro Volunteer Lawyers (MVL) trains attorney volunteers to run virtual and telephonic clinics and to prepare legal documents for low-income clients. Our fundraising efforts in the winter of 2021 helped MVL purchase iPads and other technology needed to run these clinics online during the pandemic. We kicked off this fundraiser by hosting a Basic Estate Planning training to encourage CWBA members to volunteer at MVL’s clinics.
The Colorado Lawyers Committee Young Lawyer Division Pro Bono Grant Program offers financial assistance to young lawyers who take on pro bono cases. The CWBA raised funds for this program in the spring of 2021.
Through these four fundraising efforts, the CWBA community donated over $1,000 to each of these charitable causes, and the CWBA donated a total of $4,000 in matching funds.
2021-22 Fundraising: Girls Athletic Leadership School
CWBA is excited to partner with the Girls Athletic Leadership Schools Denver for the 2021-2022 spring fundraising focus. GALS of Denver are the first and only tuition free, public, all-girls college preparatory schools in Colorado. With a focus on academics, leadership, bold living, and physical thriving, GALS believes in the positive impact of physical activity on academics.
As COVID-19 has had a specific and difficult impact on students around the world, CWBA is proud to be fundraising for GALS and encourages its members to donate to help support such a wonderful organization. The CWBA Gives Back Initiative will provide $1000 of matching funds.
Kicking off this initiative, the Legal Services Committee hosted a half-day webinar marking the 50th Anniversary of Title IX on February 11, 2022. In celebrating this anniversary, the workshop covered the history of Title IX and reforms in Colorado, best practices for working with and representing trauma victims, and a panel featuring attorneys representing victims and practitioners in the Title IX field. The webinar was introduced by GALS’ founder, Liz Wolfson, who talked about the impact of Title IX on female students and athletes in particular.
For more information or to donate, please visit https://galsdenver.org/support. Please note that your contribution is a CWBA donation on the check, Venmo, or online giving "Dedication" field.
Christine Yun Sauer is a Partner at Robins Kaplan LLP where she works with individual inventors and companies to navigate intellectual property and commercial disputes, patent office trials, and licensing monetization efforts across a vast range of technologies and industries. She received her law degree from the University of Minnesota and her Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and Political Science from Case Western Reserve University. After recently moving here to Colorado, Christine joined the CWBA's Legal Services Committee and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Colorado. Christine also serves as a Board Member for Benefits in Action and is a volunteer reader for Reading Partners.