International activities

Community Challenge – our annual firmwide team challenge month

Nearly 700 people got involved in our 2008 Community Challenge. This was the second time we had supported this international community and pro bono event, which encourages all our offices to participate in team challenges with local community organisations.

Once again, volunteers came from all practice groups and business services areas, and helped make a real difference to homeless people and disadvantaged young people in our local communities.

In 2007 over 600 people (including both our senior partners) from 23 offices around the network participated in the Challenge and we will be supporting the initiative again in October 2009.

Team challenges throughout the year

Many of our offices also choose to support team challenges at other times of the year, tying in with initiatives such as UN World Environment Day.

Since 2001, around 750 people from a variety of offices have participated in our housebuilding project with Habitat for Humanity. They have raised over £700,000 for the charity, which aims to tackle poverty housing on a global scale in partnership with people in need of safe, decent housing. In 2008 alone, 100 volunteers from our offices in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK helped to build houses in Ghana, while nearly 50 volunteers in London also volunteered at a housebuild supported by the charity in south London, as part of our Community Challenge initiative.

'Our relationship with Freshfields has been a key catalyst to our development as a charity; helping us to broaden and deepen our impact as an agent of change at the heart of local communities – a means of raising awareness of the impact of poverty housing and homelessness and the grassroots solutions Habitat for Humanity provides. At the heart of local communities, volunteers do bring money, but far more importantly they work alongside future house-owners, and it is this more than anything that reminds people that they are not forgotten in their struggle for a roof over their heads.'
Ian Walkden, National Director of Habitat for Humanity Great Britain

"Being part of an international housebuild group was key to the experience and reminds you of just how international the firm is, and how good it is to make connections throughout the network.'
Habitat volunteer in 2008