Namati Stories

Marlon Manuel is a Senior Advisor to the Legal Empowerment Network, and his walk toward justice began long before he joined Namati in 2018. For nearly a decade prior, he worked as the Coordinator of the Alternative Law Groups, which is a coalition of legal resource organizations in the Philippines that work with poor and marginalized communities toward their empowerment and greater access to justice. Marlon is inspired by people’s stories, and he himself has a rich life story full of reasons to be optimistic that despite the dark days we’re living in, the problems we’re working to solve are not insurmountable. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

In many instances, realizing that the audio file for the conversation you just recorded is broken would be a tragedy, but when it happened after David Arach and I spoke, all it meant was I got to hang out with him a little longer and hear his story one more time, which is far from a tragedy. David is a Senior Program Officer for Namati’s Community Land Protection program in Kenya. He is a joy to be around, and I am so glad we got to meet each other in Myanmar last year.

Debayan Gupta is a Legal Research Associate with the CPR-Namati Environmental Justice Program in India. Debayan is of course deeply committed to environmental justice and empowering communities to advocate for themselves, but what you may not know about him is that he plays the most important instrument in any rock band: the bass guitar. Once we can recruit a drummer and a singer and come up with a name, we are going to start Namati’s first ever pop-punk band. We’ll be sure to let you know when the first show is.

Ye Yint directs Namati's Myanmar program. In this episode, he shares with us how he found Namati In the midst of Myanmar's transition to democracy, what kind of cases he and the Myanmar team work on, and a bit about his "we can do this!" attitude and the world he'd like to see.

Luciana Bercovich is Namati's Senior Network Engagement Officer. In this episode, she shares with us a bit about how her work in Argentina led her to the Global Legal Empowerment Network, and what legal empowerment means to her.