Community Service

Community Service

As one of its objective, the University is providing community service to the nearby societies. The School is engaged in giving trainings for different section of the society to increase their legal awareness. Accordingly, it provided training for social court judges on substantive and procedural laws who came from different Woreda’s in 2010/11 and 2011/2012 academic year. It also gave training for selected women of Dilla Town on the area of women rights and family law in 2011/2012. The school has the aim to proceed with such activities in the coming years.

Furthermore, as part of its community service, the School of Law has established Free Legal Aid Centre in Gedeo Zone, Dilla Town since October, 2010. The centre was founded in collaboration with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission that has extended financial support to accomplish its goals. The main objective of the centre is helping the needy part of the community by giving free legal counselling, preparing petitions and defences, providing legal representation, and awareness creation on key and sensitive legal issues. Furthermore, by identifying the societal legal problems, it aims at conducting research which can solve such problems.

Notably, the centre is primarily established to help the needy part of the community, in particular:

ü  women,

ü  children,

ü  senior citizens,

ü  persons with disabilities and

ü  HIV positive individuals.

Moreover, the centre is serving as a centre of practice for clinical courses of the law school. Students are participating in advising clients, drawing up petitions and preparing memorandums. This makes students acquainted with practical aspect of legal education. As part of this task, it also serves as a place of externship for some law graduating students.

Making amicable discussions with public offices on behalf of its clients is one of the practical achievements of the Dilla University free legal aid centre. The centre is currently working in collaboration with the Zonal public offices particularly with the Zonal Womens, Children and Youth office, the Zonal Prison Administration, the Zonal High and first instance Courts.