Opticians chain Vision Express has donated £105,000 to the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust (CECT) to help children fight against rare form of eye cancer called Retinoblastoma.
The donation is the biggest to date since Vision Express began supporting the charity in 2010.
It marks 25 years of Vision Express trading and is part of a major funding initiative brought together 4,000 members of staff called ‘Ride4Sight‘ which was tackled by a team of 40 volunteers, peddling from the company‘s first store in Gateshead to the Nottingham head office.
Vision Express CEO Jonathan Lawson said the company decided to mark its 25 year trading milestone in a meaningful way.
“I‘m extremely proud that employees across the company have rolled up their sleeves to plan fundraisers, hold raffles, dress up in costumes and cycle through wind and rain, in a combined effort to raise money and enable us to make this donation,” he said.
“And we aren‘t stopping there. Over the next 12 months we‘ve set ourselves targets to raise even more, and we‘ve established a dedicated charity committee to drive fundraising forward within the business so we can continue to make a difference.”
Retinoblastoma is a rare form of cancer which affects the retina of children, predominantly under the age of six years. Statistically it affects 1:20,000 live births each year. This can also be expressed as 50 cases a year or about one child a week in the UK and represents 3 per cent of childhood cancers in the UK.
