Our Leicester Office team has painted the town red! Well... light blue actually...

As part of our firm's diversity and inclusion pledge, a group of dedicated painters and decorators from Freeths spent their Sunday re decorating a room at the Somali Community Parents Association (SOCOPA), a Leicestershire-based charity that provides support to people of Somali origin in the region.

SOCOPA also offers training and health programmes for the local community and focuses in particular on vulnerable people in the community and those who are isolated, elderly and have long term health conditions.Developed with the help of Leicestershire Cares, the project aimed to create a warm and welcoming area for those in need. Involving a huge amount of planning, in terms of equipment, volume of paint and most importantly ladders, the team also had to pick the colour from a rather wide brief of 'light blue'. The results however, were well worth it.

Emma Anderson, Director and Diversity Champion at Freeths Leicester, said: “It was a great day and fantastic to have so many volunteers - 13 in total - which demonstrates our commitment as an office to the company's Diversity and Inclusion pledge. If we say so ourselves we worked well together as a team - the phrase 'well-oiled machine' springs to mind...but mostly it was brilliant that so many people were willing to give up their Sunday to help others and to give something back to our local community. We're already thinking about the next one!”*Fun Fact: the expression 'paint the town red' is said by some to originate from the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray where in 1837 Henry Beresford, the Marquis of Waterford and his friends got drunk, stole some red paint and 'rampaged' through the town splattering paint on doors and windows as they went. *