Poverty Law Examples

Some of you may intersect with wikis, but may not know it.

• FEMA Answers: (Legal Services) A great demonstration of the power of the wiki...This wiki was created in the legal aid community immediately after Hurricane Katrina, providing a portal for legal aid advocates for issues relating to FEMA. Within one day, a group of over 20 advocates from various programs around the country were able to co-create one online space with extensive, timely information on FEMA for their clients.
• Food Stamp Fraud Wiki - (Legal Services)- Georgia Legal Services Program administers a wiki devoted to assisting lawyers dealing with food stamp fraud. MMonahan posted a blog about their site.

• Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC): APALC of Southern California uses a number of wikis to do their work:
• Content development for our leadership development's web site (pre-formal site launch we want to know what the content of the site would look like): http://www.ldir.org
• Collaboration with partners in the area of immigrant access to safety net programs: www.apalc.org/
• Their intranet is a wiki where the front page is protected and sub-pages are what they call an "invitation to chaos". The chaos is intentional since staff are told they can not make a mistake than cannot be undone and that content is searchable so we don't really have to worry about taxonomies.
• Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Law (Legal Services) - maintained by a joint effort of legal aid attorneys and the private bar. Grew out of a state bar committee on the topic.
• Livehelpteam Wiki - This online wiki, hosted by PBWiki.com, allows the national LiveHelp TIG grant team (composed of members from Montana Legal Services, Iowa Legal Aid, Georgia Legal Services, and Pro Bono Net)to share and collaborate on grant documents, meeting notes, and observations on LiveHelp activities that can later be used for evaluation purposes. This wiki also houses a collection of LiveHelp resources that can be used or modified by team members at any time.

• Legal Services of South Central Michigan Technology (LSSCM) (Legal Services) - basically a program tech manual online and accessible to everyone in the program 24/7. Since this in an internal wiki and sits behind a password we only have a screenshot to view.
• NTAP wiki: (Legal Services) Our internal wiki acts as a intranet and a collaborative workspace. It requires a password, so you can't view it.
• Illinois Legal Aid Online Tech Wiki: (Legal Services) ILAO created a wiki using MediaWiki hosted on their servers to store all of their technical documentation for both their internal systems and their four websites. The Wiki is password protected.
• Arkansas Legal Services: ALS houses a wiki to provide a poverty law manual for all pro bono attorneys. This saved the organization on mailing costs and the need for one person to update a single pdf.
  
• Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania: LASP hosts their staff manual, Help Line manual, and other resources for their organization on a wiki. This helped synchronized the different versions of their manuals floating around the state.

More Examples from Cyberspace

• Wikipedia: The most famous wiki is known as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org). It is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

• Never Again: (Nonprofit) This wiki is for an nonprofit "international network which aims to provoke ideas and actions for peace". They've done a fantastic job or making an engaging site that's full of important information (and looks good, too - which is not the most important thing, but is certainly not always the case with wikis). Takes a minute to open because of the photos.
• List of Wikis in Use by Nonprofits: You can find examples of organizations using wikis and articles involving nonprofit wiki usage at this link which goes to Netsquared.
• Davis, California This is the wiki of the city of Davis in California.
• Advocacy Developers Wiki
• Penguin Day Conference Wiki
• Green Wiki: This site is meant to be a source for people well versed in environmental information as well as those beginning to explore this important issue.