COMMUNITY
Our approach to community work
We do not have to teach our people to be good citizens: in a recent survey of over 800 Freshfields staff, 90 per cent stated that volunteering formed an important part of our responsibility towards the communities around us. With this strong latent belief, the firm is seeing greater participation in charitable activity year on year.
Freshfields has developed a flexible programme for community engagement. Although there are prominent global themes to our charity work – such as helping young people in need and providing care for those who find themselves homeless – we encourage our individual offices to choose appropriate and worthy local causes. There is also flexibility in the service we offer. It could be sharing our experience to help people find work, giving our time to clean up a playground, or simply donating some money to a fundraising campaign – whatever is most needed and will make a noticeable difference to people's lives.
In this section you can read about the consistency and the contrast that makes our programme what it is, and about the positive impact it is having.
Disadvantaged young people
One of Freshfields' community investment priorities is improving the lives of young people in the communities in which we operate. In the UK we sponsor and support Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity. We are fully behind their 'Keys to the Future' project, which is aimed at helping to end child homelessness. As part of this campaign, by donating time and funding we have helped them establish and maintain the Shelter Children's Legal Service. It provides vital free legal advice to homeless children and their families – a section of society the charity fears is 'invisible'.
Elsewhere in the world, we run many initiatives aimed at improving the lives of underprivileged children. Many of our offices are involved in health, welfare and education programmes for local children and their families.In Brussels and several of our offices in Germany, for example, our people are currently engaged in teaching programmes for young children. In Italy our offices have for several years given both time and sponsorship to help sick children.
Community Challenge
We want as many of our people as possible to take part in work for good causes. That is why we started our Community Challenge initiative. This is an opportunity for everybody – lawyers and business services staff alike – to find ways to help local charities.
Hundreds are involved all around the world. In New York, our office is involved with 'New York Cares', which mobilises the city's workers to meet the needs of the surrounding community. In 2009 the team provided food and clothing for homeless people and sponsored holidays for disadvantaged children. In London, our staff contributed to a wide number of causes last year, from decorating drop-in centres to holding poetry sessions for children. In Bahrain, we have spent time helping women and children learn English skills, and across the Middle East our people united in a fundraising push during Ramadan.
Spare time comes at a premium at this firm. Even so, there is an increasing amount of investment in local communities at Freshfields. This is something we are extremely proud of – and is testament to the generosity of those involved.
Readiness for work
Another multi-country effort is our work to help young people prepare themselves to take on a first job. At our offices in Frankfurt, Paris and London, we spent time last year collaborating with local schools and colleges to help students gain invaluable knowledge of a working environment.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often have little knowledge of what office life might be like. Just the experience of coming in and talking to happy, interested people going about their business can be enough to influence personal aspirations.
Our work experience periods offer even more insight. And they can certainly remove some myths about office life. One boy said after a placement at Freshfields, "I didn't know people were allowed to laugh when they were at work!".
Working life is something we take for granted. Opening our doors to those yet to imagine a career of their own is helping break barriers and build hope.
