Even when it feels like the odds are stacked against us, everyday people around the world are strengthening democracies from the ground up—by knowing, using, and shaping the law.
That’s the heart of legal empowerment. And it’s what our grantee partner Namati works on every day.
Namati’s Sonia Park invites you to join the movement.

Art by Raven Jiang for Henry Luce Foundation
Ali (name changed), a soft-spoken Nubian man from Kenya, became a community paralegal because, as he put it, “I wanted to give back to my community.” But his journey runs deeper.
Like millions of Kenyan citizens from minority groups, Ali was once denied a national ID due to a discriminatory vetting system—not unlike Jim Crow-era barriers in the US. With the help of a community paralegal, Ali navigated the bureaucracy, eventually securing his ID and a scholarship. Empowered by that experience, he chose to become a paralegal himself to help others overcome injustice and claim their rights.
Ali’s story is one of thousands fueling a growing movement for belonging and equal citizenship in Kenya. And it’s working. Through countless community meetings, radio shows, petitions, and individual ID cases, this movement helped abolish vetting committees in 2024, a once-unthinkable win. This wasn’t a top-down reform. It was a bottom-up transformation, led by people like Ali.
“When you start using rules to make progress on problems…it starts to change the way people see the system they’ve often thought of as something distant or as a source of repression.”
Community paralegals aren’t lawyers. They’re trusted neighbors who help others understand the law, solve local problems, and make systems more fair. Their impact is real. In interviews with people in Kenya, Myanmar, and India who worked with paralegals, 84% reported greater legal knowledge. 92% said they now want to help others do the same.
Ali’s story shows us that legal empowerment works. It changes systems and people’s lives.
Each of us has the power to know the law, use the law, shape the law. Start your journey today.