A group of Travers Smith partners, including Managing Partner David Patient and Senior Partner Chris Hale, will be taking to the streets on 1 September to complete a Sleep Easy Challenge in aid of City YMCA, one of the firm's long-running charity partners.
As part of the challenge, the partners will be sleeping rough for the night in the old Spitalfields Market from 7pm to 7am. The team will be assembling their own cardboard sleeping areas and meeting with a number of young people from City YMCA to learn about their experiences of homelessness before bedding down for a night on the pavement.
Speaking ahead of the challenge, Managing Partner David Patient said: "We've worked very closely with City YMCA over the last 18 months and this experience will give us an insight into the lives of the people they work with and understand more about how our support can help them."
As well as financially contributing towards the cost of building City YMCA's new hostel, Travers Smith has also donated furniture, art and other materials for the bedrooms and communal spaces. In addition, the firm has provided City YMCA with pro bono legal advice on a number of matters, and regularly supplies meeting rooms and other resources for the charity's trustee and audit committee meetings.
Daniel Gerring, CSR Partner, said: "We believe in building meaningful, and sustainable partnerships with charities and other not for profit organisations in our local community. Through our work with City YMCA we have provided them with financial support, as well as our legal expertise, and being able to see first-hand the valuable services City YMCA offers vulnerable young people in our neighbourhood is a great opportunity for us to strengthen our partnership with them even further."
Travers Smith's charity work is an important part of its overall CSR Programme, which supports schools and young people, as well as improving access to justice by broadening the range of people who can access free legal advice.
Along with significant financial and in-kind support for our major nominated charity partner, (currently Mind, the mental health charity), Travers Smith has also provided small grants and donations to over 30 charities via the Travers Smith Foundation, which was launched in October 2015.
More information about our charity work and our CSR Programme can be found on our website: http://www.traverssmith.com/csr-and-diversity/corporate-social-responsibility.