Global consultants dress down for Fight for Sight

Global business consultants, Watson Wyatt, chose Fight for Sight as their nominated charity for November 2009.

More than 260 employees at the company’s Redhill office in Surrey, led by Fight for Sight supporter Kevin Pepper, swapped their business dress for casual wear raising over £230 for research into blindness and eye disease.

Kevin and his wife Clare are regular supporters of Fight for Sight and have been fundraising to support research into choroideremia, an inherited eye condition that affects their 17 year old son Joe.

Kevin was pleased so many of his colleagues supported Fight for Sight by taking part: “It’s great that I had the opportunity to raise awareness within the office and hope that I can get Fight for Sight to be the nominated charity again in the future.”

Fight for Sight is the UK’s leading charity dedicated to funding world-class research into blindness and eye disease. The charity’s current research programme of over £5 million is funding research into the prevention and treatment of a range of eye conditions including choroideremia.

Annu Mayor, Director of Fundraising, is delighted Kevin and his colleagues nominated Fight for Sight to benefit from the company’s fundraising activities: “We are very grateful for Kevin and Clare’s commitment to Fight for Sight and are delighted so many of their friends and colleagues have also chosen to support the vital research we are funding into the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease.”

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For more information call Louise Elliott at Fight for Sight on
020 7929 7755 or visit our website: www.fightforsight.org.uk

Note for Editors:
Fight for Sight is the UK’s leading charity dedicated to funding world-class research into the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease.

Since 1965, the charity has funded millions of pounds worth of research at leading universities and hospitals throughout the UK. Our major achievements in this time include:
• saving the sight of thousands of  premature babies through understanding and controlling levels of oxygen delivery;
• restoring sight by establishing the UK Corneal Transplant Service enabling over 45,000 corneal transplants to take place;
• revolutionising the treatment for children with amblyopia (lazy eye);
• bringing hope to children with inherited eye disease by helping fund the team responsible for the world’s first gene therapy clinical trial; and
• providing £1million for the research unit at the dedicated children’s eye centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Fight for Sight’s current research programme of over £5 million focuses on preventing and treating age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and cataract as well as causes of childhood blindness.