Post by Franz Ranero

I visited Rwanda two weeks ago, together with a small team from Allen & Overy, including our managing partner Khalid Garousha, to learn about Women for Women International’s (WFWI) core programmes, which will share some key characteristics to the work in Iraq which A&O is funding through our Global Charity Partnership with WFWI. With all of Rwanda’s sweeping terraced hills, lush dense green forest and buzzing and bustling town streets, the highlight of my adventure was a disciplined board meeting in a village house. The meeting was like any number of other meetings - the chair ran through roll call and quorum, referred to minutes of the last meeting, outlined the agenda, and accounts were taken - with everything being recorded on an app. We were witnessing the results of a three year grant the Allen & Overy Foundation had provided to fund WFWI’s project of developing a digitised system allowing communities to facilitate their management of co-operatives and provide lending and borrowing between co-operatives and their members. During this board meeting, twenty or so women had developed a co-operative, and were managing a business involving both farming and the production and sale of crafts. It’s a whole commercial and financial ecosystem, a microeconomy, facilitated and recorded through the technology in the hand of the chairwoman. Ordered, undramatic, efficient. And the tools empowering this group of women to better their lives through their commercial and financial endeavours were directly supported by the A&O Foundation. We saw the work in action, a rare gift. Whether it’s through our Foundation, our Global Charity Partnership or other social impact work, it is all very real, and certainly impactful to the people who benefit from it. Click here to learn more about Women for Women International and find out how you can get involved: https://bit.ly/3Ts9ZAs And on our Social Impact partnerships and other work at A&O: https://lnkd.in/ejpxsyCn