South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

About South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO)

South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) is a Legal Aid Ontario funded community legal clinic based in Toronto, on Sheppard Avenue near Yonge Street. It began as a volunteer legal clinic in 1999, picked up project funding from the Law Foundation of Ontario in 2001, and became a permanently funded Legal Aid Ontario clinic in 2007. SALCO's mandate is to improve access to justice for low income South Asian communities in Ontario through direct legal services, public legal education, and law reform work.

The clinic's lawyers handle immigration matters such as sponsorship, humanitarian applications, and removal proceedings, along with employment law, income support programs, and gender based violence cases, and they give advice on family law, tenancy, and consumer issues. Representation is decided case by case based on a client's financial and ethno racial eligibility. Staff serve clients in English and several South Asian languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu, and Bengali, and the clinic publishes family and immigration law guides in those languages. Beyond its Sheppard Avenue office, SALCO reaches clients through eight satellite locations at partner community agencies across the Greater Toronto Area.