On June 29, approximately 150 DLA Piper lawyers, staff and clients from 19 offices across the country attended a Marbury Institute presentation by Peter Godwin, renowned Zimbabwean author, journalist and filmmaker and one of the most well-known and outspoken commentators on the political and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe.
Trained initially as a lawyer at Cambridge and Oxford, Mr. Godwin went on to become an award winning journalist, reporting from over 60 countries for, among others, the BBC, the London Sunday Times and the New York Times. He is the author of five prominent non-fiction books, four of which focus on Zimbabwe.His latest, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, begins with Mr. Godwin returning home to Zimbabwe in 2008 to celebrate Mugabe’s defeat in the latest presidential election. The celebration never got off the ground, since Mugabe went on to orchestrate yet another brutal campaign of terror and intimidation, which Mr. Godwin witnessed and reported on first-hand at great personal risk.
When I first heard about the New Perimeter Financial Inclusion Project, I was intrigued by its focus on rural women as well as the village savings and loan model. I was excited to be selected as part of the team and for the challenge of putting my experience analyzing international statutes and doing local advocacy to work in a different part of the world. Starting in late 2010, we got to work researching best practices for microfinance, reviewing the Malawian statutes and pending legislation, reaching out to local stakeholders, and learning more about the country. Another part of our team did a similar analysis for Rwanda.
