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Jeans for Genes Day
This year's Jeans for Genes Day was on Friday 5 October and once again Mark Underwood in the Leeds office of Barnett Waddingham encouraged his office to support this campaign, with the other UK offices also choosing to join in this year.
Jeans for Genes began as a national fundraising campaign in 1996 organised by five national charities to raise funds for research into serious and often life-threatening genetic disorders affecting children. The five charities are The Great Ormond Hospital Children's Charity, The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, The Primary Immunodeficiency Association, The Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases, and the Chronic Granulomatous Disorder Research Trust. Since 1996 the total so far raised for these charities stands at over £9.5 m and in addition this year the charities are hoping to raise a further £2.5 m.
To join in all we had to do was simply wear our jeans, casual clothing or anything other than the norm and then make a donation to the appeal. By taking part in total Barnett Waddingham raised over £640 this year for the appeal. Understandably the amount of donations varied but in one or two cases, even though there was a willing and commendable spirit to wear "old jeans", it might have boosted fund raising even more to auction these articles of clothing as antiques!
Hopefully our contribution this year will help the charities reach their goal and for the time being some members of staff have "moth-balled" their jeans safely away at the back of the wardrobe to keep them in pristine condition for next year.
Mark Underwood, November 2001.