Now recruiting for Women’s Legal and Self-Empowerment Certificate Cohort 2 beginning January 2027.
Every community has someone they turn to. For a confusing letter. A landlord dispute. A legal question with no clear answer and nowhere obvious to take it.
The Women’s Legal and Self-Empowerment Certificate (WLSEC) was built for exactly that person — the neighbor, the tía, the family liaison, the community leader people already trust. WLSEC trains them to become Community Certified Legal Advocates (CCLAs), completely free, no law degree required. Just community trust and the willingness to help.
Cohort 1 is currently underway, and it’s safe to say we underestimated the need.
Cohort 1, by the numbers
When we set out to recruit our first cohort, our goal was 20 participants. We ended up enrolling 27 — exceeding our goal by 35% — after fielding 339 expressions of interest through the WLSEC interest form and 49 completed applications from community members across Arizona.
“Cohort 1 is officially the largest cohort Innovation for Justice has supported to date,” said Gabriela Elizondo-Craig, Professor of Practice, University of Arizona & Co-Coordinator, Community Legal Education Programs, Innovation for Justice (i4J). “We built this program to meet people where the need already was, and Arizona showed us exactly how deep that need runs.”
The response didn’t stop at enrollment. Cohort 1 built a pipeline for what comes next: 13 participants are already on the waitlist for the Spring 2027 cohort, and planning for that cohort is underway well ahead of schedule.
Cohort 1 also marked a new partnership. Jhody Polk of the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH) leads the self-empowerment component of the program, contributing a curriculum focused on personal confidence, self-advocacy, and leadership skills that complements the legal education participants receive — equipping women not just with legal knowledge, but with the tools to navigate systems and advocate for themselves and their communities.
“The response to this program has been overwhelming, and it tells us something important: this need has been there all along, waiting for someone to build the right door to walk through,” said Katia Jones, CEO of the Women’s Foundation for the State of Arizona. “WLSEC works because it doesn’t ask communities to come to us. It trains the people already doing this work, informally, every day, and gives them the tools to do it with confidence and backing.”
What’s Next? Cohort 2 begins in January 2027
Cohort 2 runs January 11 through June 7, 2027, and recruitment is open now — with a focus on rural and tribal communities across Arizona.
WLSEC is free, community-led, and built in partnership with Innovation for Justice (i4J), the Women’s Foundation for the State of Arizona (WFSA), the Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH), and funded by the Vitalyst Health Foundation. It isn’t a program designed somewhere else and dropped into a community — it’s built with the people who use it, for the realities they navigate every day.
To apply, you’ll need:
- No law degree or legal background — just a willingness to learn
- A volunteer or employee relationship with a local or participating community-based organization
- Experience as someone your community already turns to
Applications open soon. The fastest way to stay ahead of that timeline is to fill out the interest form and join an info session, where you can ask questions and meet the team directly.
Upcoming info sessions:
👉 Fill out the interest form: womengiving.org/certificate
Cohort 1 showed us what happens when you trust community leaders with the right training. Cohort 2 is the next chapter — help us find the people ready to lead it.
