Name of Host Organization: Northern Kentucky Legal Aid Society, Inc.

City, State: Covington, KY

Issue area: Immigrant Populations/Minorities

Sponsor: Anonymous

Lea Webb worked with immigrant victims of domestic violence throughout northern, central and eastern Kentucky at the Legal Aid of the Bluegrass. She was based in Covington, which sits on the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, but traveled frequently to service the large immigrant population that powers the horse racing and tobacco industries of the Bluegrass. Lea provided legal services and information in immigration, family, custody, child support, housing and public benefits law to her clients, as she helped them try to establish lives free from domestic violence. She also began to organize self-help groups among her clients and other women in the immigrant communities. Long involved in feminist political activism, especially around issues of domestic violence and family law, Lea joined her interest in immigration with her passion for justice for women in family law and designed a project to provide full legal services to immigrants surviving domestic violence. As testament to the need for such service, Lea's project began with a minimal amount of outreach before her caseload was full. Lea's host organization, Legal Aid of the Bluegrass, was created from four legal serves programs. This increased territory allowed Lea to work with many more clients and provided her with support in three other offices. The consolidation of legal services programs in the state also made it much easier to advocate within the organization for increased services and outreach to immigrants, who frequently needed legal assistance in order to protect against abuses by abusers, employers, criminals and predatory lenders.