Francine wears jewelleries created by the women she helps in Rwanda and New Jersey

When she was six years old, Francine LeFrak went with her grandparents to a union meeting. She remembers seeing hundreds of people and how upset they were because they had no place for their next meeting. “So I got up on a chair and invited everyone to hold their meeting in my basement!” she recalls of this unforgettable moment, still hearing the laughter all around her, as she must have certainly diffused the tension that normally comes with labour disputes. Though today she finds that story “cute,” it is also perhaps her first memory of caring for and sympathising with people who were not born with the same privileges as her.

Francine is one of four children of the late New York real-estate developer Sam LeFrak and his wife Ethel. She was in Manila as a judge of the 2017 Miss Universe beauty pageant and took a rare respite from the hectic schedule. With good friend and global finance consultant Joanne de Asis-Benitez, Francine got an inside view of the Philippines at the National Museum, upon the invitation of Senator Loren Legarda. Over lunch in Intramuros, it was Francine’s turn to give a behind-the-scenes look at her life.

She grew up steeped in philanthropy because of parents who, as she says, “always wanted to make a difference in the community.” So they built a concert hall, donated vitrines displaying costumes to the Metropolitan Opera or a floor at the Guggenheim Museum, to name a few. Her father’s words still ring in her memory: “We built these communities but let us give the people a park or a gymnasium for them to have a fuller life and not a narrow perspective.” With such a foundation, it is no surprise that Francine is now, herself, making a difference.

Joanne de Asis-Benitez and Francine LeFrak

First, she made a difference in film and theatre as an award-winning producer of widely acclaimed productions. But in the course of her research on the 1994 Rwandan genocide for a possible film, she felt compelled to do something for the women who survived and now live with HIV. This closed the curtain on her life in the entertainment industry as she opened a new one—equally, if not more, fulfilling.

Francine founded Same Sky, an initiative she calls “trade-not-aid,” through which she gave these women a source of livelihood and a means to market their products so they can rise up again with dignity and economic freedom. Same Sky’s work in Rwanda has been going on for almost 10 years now but halfway through, Francine was approached by a friend who was working at the Hudson County Jail and trying to help ex-offenders build new lives. He was frustrated. “I can’t give them jobs!” he told her, to which she remarked, “Listen, if you have any women among them, I will give them jobs.” So she started working with them in a halfway house, providing them with training to make jewellery, like she did with the women in Rwanda.

At lunch, she points to the beautiful long silver necklace she was wearing. “This necklace pays for a child’s schooling for one whole year.” And then she points to a bracelet on Benitez’s wrist and says, “Joanne’s bracelet pays for healthcare for an HIV-positive rape victim in Rwanda.” The jewellery is marketed online because, Francine says, you cannot tell the story behind them over the counter in a department store. “This is part of a movement of conscious consumerism where you buy something that impacts the life of someone and you get to feel good when you wear it. You are wearing something that makes a difference, as opposed to the way we consume, which is so problematic,” she explains.

She has nothing but praises for the women, both in New Jersey and in Rwanda. She finds it amazing that in New Jersey, on Martin Luther King Boulevard where the women string the beads, there is so much temptation that can lure them back to the streets. “But the beads seem like a meditation for them and instead, they begin to dream about going to school or becoming a hairdresser or the like,” she says. A measure of the project’s success is the zero rate of recidivism among its participants—because in the population of ex-offenders in America, the recidivism rate is 70 per cent.

Philosophy of Philanthropy

(Clockwise) Tourism Usec Dondi Teehankee, Edgar Sia II, Joanne de Asis-Benitez, Greggy Araneta III, Sen Loren Legarda, Lizzy Razon, Jose EB Antonio, Atty Lorna Kapunan, Mercedes Zobel, Francine LeFrak, Betty Sy, Hilda Antonio

Francine’s interest in women in extreme poverty hinges on her belief that a job is the greatest philanthropy you can give someone. “When you give someone dignity, you are giving them a life. When you give them charity, it’s neither here nor there, simply a lovely gesture,” she says.

But for Francine, philanthropy works both ways. “When you reach out to someone and try to have empathy or do something for someone else, it is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. When you are alone with your thoughts, this is when you can be most self-destructive. It’s when you’re helping someone else and reaching out and having access to that person that gives you access to something inside you. That gives you real true happiness.”

She counts her blessings, one of which is the realisation that with fortune comes responsibility. “I am just very happy to be put into that role,” she says.

No one could be happier, and more grateful, than a woman in Rwanda or an ex-offender in New Jersey working for a new life.