Pro Bono Spotlight on... Vulnerable Groups: Refugees

29,456

The number of asylum applications made in the UK in the year ending December 2020. 2,291 of those applications for asylum were from unaccompanied children.

3,560

The number of people resettled to the UK in the year to June 2020.

1%

The UK is home to approximately 1% of the 29.6 million refugees, forcibly displaced across the world.

Travers Smith has a long-standing commitment to supporting the needs of refugees and people of refugee backgrounds. This is demonstrated by the award-winning work we have undertaken in this field over the past five years and our holistic commitment to improving the lives of refugees. With more and more people displaced for longer periods of time, our role in supporting refugees is ever more critical.

In addition to providing extensive pro bono advice to a growing number of clients who work with refugees, members of our staff have hosted refugees via Refugees at Home and our Chief Technology Officer and one of our partners are Trustees of Refugees at Home. Last year, Travers Smith also became a member of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a non-profit organisation made up of more than 140 major companies who are committed to including refugees either by training and hiring refugees into their workforce, leveraging their supply chains to hire refugees or supporting refugee entrepreneurs with loans, training or access to market.

The following is a selection of some of our recent pro bono projects relating to refugees:

Refugees at Home
Setting up Refugees at Home and acting as the charity's in-house counsel.
CodeYourFuture
Conducting a legal health check for a charity that enables refugees to find employment.

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Refugees at Home

Refugees at Home is a UK charity which connects those with a spare room to refugees and asylum seekers in need of somewhere to stay. Refugees at Home works with an increasingly diverse range of guests, and in recent years most guests have come from one of the following six countries: Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Sudan and Syria. The majority of those guests have been hosted in London. Since 2015, Refugees at Home has grown extensively from just two or three host families to having thousands of hosts.

2,300

The number of guests Refugees at Home has placed.

184,000

The number of placement nights set up by Refugees at Home.

We are proud to have been at the heart of Refugees at Home right from its inception in 2015, through its establishment as a charity in 2016, and now effectively acting as in-house counsel regularly advising on both key strategic issues and a wide range of day-to-day queries. In practice, we undertake some work for Refugees at Home almost every day. This has included major milestones such as setting them up as a company limited by guarantee and subsequently guiding them through the charity registration process, as well as a range of other work such as reviewing and drafting contracts with donors, suppliers, staff and other third parties, advising on data protection and IP, drafting policies, best practice on governance and assisting with disputes.

Over the last year, we have continued to provide advice to Refugees at Home on a wide range of issues including data protection and retention, regulatory queries around registration as a charity in the different countries within the UK, and operational questions relating to home working during lockdowns.

        
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            We were honoured to receive three awards for our involvement in this project:
        
Halsbury Legal Awards: “Law in the Community/Pro Bono Award”
British Legal Awards: “CSR Initiative of the year”
LawWorks Awards: “Best contribution by a firm with a London head office”

Our relationship with Refugees at Home also goes well beyond pro bono legal advice. For example, we have extended our partnership with Refugees at Home to a tripartite CSR project with Birkbeck (University of London), our business services teams have provided extensive advice critical to the charity's development and success, we have donated IT equipment, we have hosted their AGM (as well as board meetings) and we have provided some limited financial support, as well as asking our suppliers to join with us to support their efforts. Equally, our Chief Technology Officer and one of our Partners, Daniel Gerring, sit on the charity's Board and a number of our colleagues have acted as volunteer hosts for Refugees at Home.

Interview with Alex Economides:

I don’t know how Refugees at Home could ever have got started and flourished so quickly without the superb, pro-bono help from the team at Travers Smith. Their ongoing support continues to be crucial to our success and we are incredibly grateful.

CodeYourFuture

CodeYourFuture (CYF) is a non-profit coding school for refugees and disadvantaged people who want to become web developers. CYF believes in a future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. As well as providing 3 levels of coding training to its students, CYF also helps its students to find work in the tech industry by teaching employability skills. CYF students are trained in full-stack web development by professional developers from the industry who volunteer their time to teach.

CYF was established in 2016 by a group of like-minded individuals in London who had a shared aim to help refugees and disadvantaged individuals achieve better lives through working in coding. The core CYF team is small but has an army of hundreds of volunteers who help the charity reach its goal by volunteering to teach CYF students who are often from particularly vulnerable backgrounds. CYF's success is evident in the fact that its graduates work in companies like the FT, BBC, STV and Ticketmaster.

CYF has an impressive global presence, with classes held throughout the UK, in Rome, Medellin and Cape Town.

122

The number of students from a vast range of countries of origin enrolled by the charity onto their courses in 2019.

71%

The percentage of eligible CodeYourFuture graduates that are currently in employment or further education.

Travers Smith has been assisting CYF by conducting a thorough 'legal health check' of the organisation. The purpose of the legal health check is to identify what requires improvement, where new contracts and policies need to be drafted, and opportunities to strengthen CYF's legal integrity. The legal health check, and accompanying report were led by a team in PEFS, with significant contributions from the Commercial, Operation Risk, Tax and Employment teams. The legal health check report was concluded at the end of 2020 and since then the Firm has been able to assist in implementing some of the recommendations made in the report by, for example, creating new anti-bribery and corruption and privacy policies for CYF.

This legal health check, and the cross-departmental collaboration required for it, is a great example of how a firm like ours is able to support charities who wouldn't otherwise receive this legal support.

[A] big thank you for all your support, it has been fantastic receiving such feedback and help over the past few months! Everyone at CYF is grateful.

Our work with Refugees at Home and Code Your Future has given us first-hand experience not only of the positive impact that businesses and charities can have on the lives of refugees and asylum seekers, but also of the massive benefits that those we have supported can bring to our society and economy.

Alongside Refugees at Home and CodeYourFuture, we have provided pro bono support to a number of clients who work with refugees, including:

Reset – a charity that provides education and resources for the UK's refugee Community Sponsorship programme
Chatterbox - a charity that harnesses the talent of highly qualified refugees to plug the global language skills shortage by employing them to teach their native languages
Social Finance - a not for profit organisation that partners with governments, service providers, the voluntary sector and the financial community to find better ways of tackling social problems in the UK which has recently taken on a leading role in a major Home Office funded refugee initiative
The Tent Partnership for Refugees - a not for profit organisation that mobilises the business community to improve the lives and livelihoods of refugees through hiring and training refugees and leveraging their supply chains to do the same