Letter from the Board Chair
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
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adventure, a little anxiety and ultimately, gratitude. The appreciation was for Meg Connolly and her enormous success at leading VLP for 24 years. The adventure, and the smidgen of anxiety, arose from the process of selecting a new executive director from a large pool of talented candidates. The gratitude we feel as an organization comes from so many directions - we are grateful for Meg's inspired leadership, grateful to the staff for handling the transition so smoothly, grateful to our volunteers for their selfless hard work, grateful to our donors, particularly for their generosity in establishing the Meg Connolly Leadership Opportunities Fund, and, finally, very grateful to Sheila Hubbard for accepting our offer to become VLP's third executive director. Sheila is experienced, capable, talented, delightful, and very, very busy in taking over a vibrant organization in a depressed economy.
For the greater Boston area, 2009 was one very tough year. While the foreclosure rate improved slightly from 2008, there were still far too many filings and the rate of mortgage delinquency rose, putting more low-income homeowners and tenants at risk of losing a place to live. A new study showed that U.S. Census figures underestimated the percentage of people living below the poverty line. For Boston, the correct number is 20.4% of its citizens, more than one in five living in poverty in a very expensive city. If you look only at children, the number living below the poverty line increases to almost 30 percent. It is no surprise, then, that the need increased for pro bono legal help with housing, bankruptcy, unemployment benefits and family law.
VLP faces that challenge with a staff of lawyers ready to train and mentor private practitioners who want to help, with its expanded court outreach programs that put lawyers in the hallways outside the courtrooms, and with its large panel of committed volunteers. The impact is enormous, both for the clients who get better results, and for the judicial system, which sees greater efficiency when both sides of a dispute have counsel.
But the job is not finished until access to legal help is universal, for civil as well as for criminal matters, regardless of income. While Massachusetts has long been a leader in recognizing and working toward this goal, it is very exciting to see the creation of a federal Access to Justice Commission. VLP, the oldest pro bono organization of its type in America, will no doubt serve as a model for one way to deliver legal services. So, we stand proud of how much VLP has accomplished, and look forward to a future of devising new and creative ways to solve the problem of unmet legal need. Welcome aboard, Sheila!
Kathleen McGrath
