Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a vital element of any business.

We see CSR as an important part of our culture and the firm has a continuing commitment to behave ethically and professionally, to contribute to the region’s economic development, to offer a good quality work environment and to support chosen charities and local community projects.

As a firm we support a range of charities throughout the year and this year we have chosen one local organisation as our charity of the year – The West End Women and Girl’s Centre. Based in Elswick, the Centre is an invaluable resource to the women and girls of the city and is the only open access centre of its kind. They aim to build the power of women and girls, who have been and continue to be disenfranchised and they seek to drive positive change in the world, our community and in women and girls’ lives.

It’s not just about fundraising. More importantly we use our skill sets to help them e.g. one of our lawyers is now on their board; we have given social media and IT training; we organised a corporate networking event for International Women’s Day 2020 at the centre to raise their profile with other local businesses and our marketing team is busy helping them plan events to celebrate their 40th anniversary next year.

The West End Women and Girls Centre has been very busy in 2020, making sure they continue to support their community throughout the pandemic with projects such as Scran 4 the Fam, which saw them serve 12,500 portions of soup between March and December. Here is an update on some of the ways they helped, which was shared at their AGM in December 2020.