Readout of Office for Access to Justice Director Rachel Rossi’s Trip to Alaska

This week, Director Rachel Rossi of the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) traveled to Anchorage and Bethel, Alaska, to engage access to justice stakeholders in the state and deliver keynote remarks at the launch event for Alaska Legal Services Corporation’s (ALSC) Community Justice Worker Resource Center.

Director Rossi and ATJ met with executives and staff from ALSC and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) in Anchorage. Director Rossi was briefed on ALSC’s Community Justice Worker Program, an innovative program designed to utilize trained, authorized community members to provide basic legal assistance in Alaska. At ANTHC, she met with leaders of the Distance Learning Initiative, which builds the curriculum used to remotely train community justice workers, and she toured the ANTHC campus to learn more about health and justice efforts faced by Alaska Natives and the role of health centers and medical-legal partnerships in increasing access to legal assistance.

Director Rossi also traveled to Bethel, the regional hub for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region. She visited Kuskokwim Consortium Library to hold a discussion with the library director to discuss the role of libraries in assisting and referring people to appropriate legal services. 

Director Rossi visited the Bethel courthouse and met with the recently appointed Chief Public Defender for the state of Alaska, as well as staff from the Bethel Holistic Defense Project, to discuss the need for rural public defenders and civil legal aid attorneys, and recent ATJ events at law schools to encourage law students to build careers in rural communities.

To conclude her visit to Bethel, Director Rossi met with leaders and staff from the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP), a consortium of 56 Tribes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region that provides social services, community development and advocacy. Director Rossi learned about the social service needs of ACVP communities and specific efforts by community justice workers at ACVP to provide legal services to individuals in need. 

Concluding the trip in Anchorage, Director Rossi participated in a panel discussion on current issues in access to justice. In her remarks, Director Rossi highlighted recent office initiatives related to criminal justice, rural access to justice, innovative access to justice solutions and language access, among other topics.

Director Rossi also met with Alaska Supreme Court Justices to discuss Alaska Supreme Court’s efforts to support access to justice programs in Alaska, including the Community Justice Worker Program. She then met with the Alaska Federal Defender and met with community justice workers to hear about their efforts. Director Rossi also met with the President of the Alaska Federation of Natives to discuss current access to justice needs in Alaska Native communities. 

On Wednesday evening, at the invitation of the Alaska Supreme Court, Director Rossi delivered keynote remarks at the launch event for the Community Justice Worker Resource Center at Alaska Pacific University. In her remarks, she highlighted the need for bold, creative solutions to the nation’s civil justice gap, like the Community Justice Worker Program. Read her full remarks here.