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establish a ‘legal empowerment programme’ as astand-alone entity. Another important dimension ofnational level work will involve working closely withprofessional associations to create a new cadre oflegal, engineering or other para-professionals toassist poor men and women.The base organisation of the poor must be engagedin the design of interventions of any kind. Informationdissemination will be a central strategyfor legal empowerment at the local level. In somecountries with particularly weak or oppressivenational governments, community empowermentactivities may be the only feasible ones. Wheresocial mobilisation is strong, however, the legalempowerment agenda can be built, bottom-up, bysupporting existing initiatives of the urban or ruralpoor.Mapping Legal Empowerment beyondthe Nation StateImplementation undertaken at the global levelshould support country-level activities. The importantdifferences among countries and regions callfor a flexible, demand-driven approach that is appropriateto local realities. The likely focus wouldbe on two types of measures to encourage legalempowerment at the country level: advocacy andknowledge management. Advocacy activities wouldfocus on getting key messages out to importanttarget audiences through a variety of vehicles. Awebsite, or a ‘brand/logo’ that can be added toexisting websites, providing updates and progressreports on how the Legal Empowerment of thePoor agenda is being implemented. An inventoryof evidence on capacity development in domainssimilar to Legal Empowerment of the Poor wouldbe compiled, and dialogue would be supported todisseminate global good practices.Knowledge management activities should buildon the initial inventories of good practice, on-goinginitiatives and actors engaged in promotingempowerment. A key element is to identify existingindicators and monitoring efforts that would furtherthe Legal Empowerment of the Poor agenda. Similarly,and particularly in the case of the rights tojustice and asset holding, evaluations for learningwill prove to be valuable.In addition, a range of measures should be undertakento prepare for country-level dealings. Countriesand international support organisations canbe identified to support the process of change atthe country level. Pro-poor toolkits and methods tosupport capacity building can be inventoried andgaps identified. These would be made availablethrough a variety of avenues, including websitesand workshops, among others.At the regional and sub-regional levels, activitiesshould also likely focus on advocacy and knowledgemanagement. The region and sub-region arecritical for success of the legal empowerment agenda;at these levels global norms can be adaptedto different socio-economic contexts. Buildingpolitical will for change will occur through regionaland sub-regional organisations, UN Regional Commissions,sub-regional bodies, and in partnershipwith regional development banks. A series of new‘Regional Social Contracts’ could be an importantmechanism to forge political consensus on thelegal empowerment agenda.Toolkits and IndicesCarrying out Legal Empowerment of the Poor takesa variety of different tools or specific techniques,many of which have been developed by anti-povertyworkers, community organisers and reform advocatesaround the world. These techniques weredesigned to promote activities analogous to thepoor person’s empowerment agenda of the poor,and they include: advocacy/lobbying; collection anddissemination of best practices; community map-279