b'Jawuncommunities, sharing their skills and knowledge to create Jawun is an Australian not-for-profit group that bringslasting, material and measurable change. A number of together First Nations peoples with corporate, philanthropicthe firms senior leaders have also undertaken intensive and government organisations to help increase the capacityexecutive visits to experience first hand the impact of and capability of First Nations communities across Australia.Jawun secondees.Jawun means friend or family and is an honour given to the organisation by the Kuku Yalanji in Cape York. The firmNoel Pearson, patron and founder of Jawun says, The most has partnered with Jawun since 2011 working alongsidevaluable thing our partners give us is their people. Through First Nations organisations in places like inner Sydney,them we gain skills to create empowerment and wealth from North-East Arnhem Land and Goulburn Murray. our ideas in a way that leaves our children and grandchildren better off. They bring practicality to our reform. Since 2014 Allens has seconded senior lawyers for three months, working with Empowered Communities, a programOne of the many organisations the firm has assisted that aims to empower communities by empowering people.through Jawun is Tranby National Indigenous Adult Empowered Communities is about facilitating place-basedEducation and Training, Australias oldest not-for-profit, reform, by redesigning approaches to First Nationsindependent Indigenous education provider. Tranby is governance, economic participation and communitynamed after the house in which the organisation was development. Empowered Communities recognises thefounded. Coincidentally, Tranby House was built by George primacy of the local nature of peoples and places, asAllen on the grounds of his Toxteth Park estate for his opposed to traditional top-down social policy frameworks. daughter Mary and her husband George Allen Mansfield, a prominent architect of the time who also designed the Over forty Allens staff have participated in the Jawuncottage. Allens continues to provide pro bono legal support secondment program, spending up to twelve weeksto Tranby. working with First Nations leaders, organisations and In 2018 Allens Systems Engineer Adam Weiser worked with theBuku-Larrgay Mulka Centre, an Indigenous community-controlled art centre located in Yirrkala, North-East Arnhem Land. Weiser helped plan and implement an update of the centres technology infrastructure to improve its security and usability. The experience strengthened Weisers connection with his new homeland (having immigrated to Australia from Texas). This gave me an opportunity to understand and engage with First Nations peoples in a whole new way and give back toa country that has given me so much, he explains.Siena Stubs and Adam Weiser at Buku-Larrgay Mulka Centre duringAdams Jawun secondment.234'