This is a guest blog post written by Avanade alum, Vikki Leach.

When Avanade announced its global charity partnership with The Aspire Foundation in September 2015, Dr Sam Collins, the CEO and founder, had over 500 mentees from charities and social organizations waiting for a corporate mentor. It was with this in mind that Avanade CEO, Adam Warby, set an internal challenge within Avanade to sign up 500 mentors by the New Year. It gives me great pleasure to say that we achieved this and with days to spare.

A total of 508 Avanade mentors have signed up with The Aspire Foundation since our partnership began. Equating to, on average, 29 new mentors every week and 4 new mentors every day. Needless to say, this is an amazing achievement that Avanade should be hugely proud of, however, on a personal level it is a pleasure to work in a community that cares so much about giving back in this way.

By signing on to help The Aspire Foundation achieve its goal to positively impact the lives of 1 billion women and girls by 2020, Avanade is joining a global community of women and men leading change. These mentors are helping to empower, upskill and give access to women from the charity sector so they in turn can have an even greater impact in the communities in which they work and live.

There is something incredibly powerful about this model which is creating a positive ripple effect of change. The mentoring program set up by Dr Sam Collins in 2010 facilitates a very manageable and concrete way for busy women and men to make a real difference to other women and it works. So far, The Aspire Foundation reports to have already made a difference to over 2 million women in 80 countries. The stories I receive daily from Avanade mentors are testament to this, not only are mentors finding the program hugely rewarding and inspiring, in fact, most find that they learn just as much from the experience as their mentees do.

Whilst we have reached a huge milestone by recruiting over 500 mentors, we are already working towards our next target of 1,000 mentors by August 31, 2016. So, if you haven’t done so yet, and can spare an hour each month, help us reach this goal. Please sign up to be an Aspire Foundation mentor and help improve the lives of billions of women around the world by 2020.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to all our mentors and to everyone that has encouraged colleagues, friends and family to join this amazing movement too. We are delighted to be helping empower, upskill and improve access for women who are out there actively changing the world. Why not join us?

Sam Collins, CEO The Aspire Foundation, at an event at the Chicago Avanade office in December 2015 – notably increased our participation.