The National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA) is a non-profit association of attorneys and consumer advocates committed to representing customers’ interests. Our members are private and public sector attorneys, legal services attorneys, law professors and law students whose primary focus is the protection and representation of consumers. NACA’s members focus much of their efforts on advocating for individuals who have been victimized by fraudulent, abusive, or predatory business practices. However, NACA is also diligently focusing on innovative educational opportunities designed to prevent consumers from falling victim to these consumer scams. We are pleased to join in celebrating National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW) with the Federal Trade Commission the week of March 3rd-9th.
“The goal of any good consumer advocate is our own obsolescence,” states Ira Rheingold, NACA’s Executive Director. Though National Consumer Protection Week comes only once a year, NACA’s educational unit strives year round to provide both attorneys and consumers with the learning resources, opportunities, and forums they need to be effective advocates for themselves and others in the marketplace. To that end, NACA has launched a new initiative aimed at providing consumer advocates with frequent, free-of-charge online webinar courses addressing the latest in substantive legal developments, legislative and regulatory updates, and more. Our goal with these webinars is to provide consumer advocates and educators a forum to absorb and share new and relevant information, and then be able to tailor and implement what they have learned to serve the specific needs of the consumer communities.
NACA also develops free educational materials and brochures on various consumer protection topics, including Fair Debt Collection, Foreclosure, Military Consumer Justice, and Auto Fraud, which can be found on NACA’s website here. The brochures provide basic information for consumers to learn more about abusive lending and ways to try to avoid it. Some of our publications are available in Spanish. As part of NACA’s Military Consumer Justice Project, we have also developed free educational materials specifically tailored for military servicemembers and their families.
As part of NCPW, NACA helped to kick off this exciting week by participating in the NCPW Congressional Fair on Thursday, February 28th. Additionally, NACA is co-sponsoring the Fair Debt Collection Practices Conference with the National Consumer Law Center in Baltimore during NCPW (March 7th-9th).