Staff from North East based sofa and carpet retailer, ScS are putting football rivalry aside and uniting in the name of charity this derby weekend.

As the Newcastle-Sunderland game approaches this weekend, the team at ScS’ head office are playing nice in the name of local charity, North of England Children’s Cancer Research (NECCR), as part of a friendly derby dress down day.

Operations Assistant, Vicki Burns commented, “Being a local North East-based company, with employees from across the region, it seems fitting to team up together to raise funds for the North of England’s Children’s Cancer Research Fund as part of our derby dress down day.

“We regularly take part in a dress down day on the Friday before a derby weekend when we invite everyone at our Sunderland head office to come to work dressed in their team’s strip or colours for a small donation. It’s great to see so many red and white and black and white shirts joining up to raise money for such a worthy charity.”

Members of staff nominate a charity of choice and a member of the team picks the recipient from a hat. This time, NECCR was picked after being nominated by the company’s e-commerce assistant manager Steve Gilroy.

Steve commented, “I nominated NECCR as this derby day’s chosen charity because my dad Tony organises The Children’s Cancer Run, which is the main fund raising event for the NECCR fund. I take part in the run each year and have seen what fantastic things the money raised does for children in the region who have been diagnosed with cancer.”

The NECCR is a charity, which is dedicated to learning more about the reasons why children develop different types of cancer developing ways to improve how doctors use chemotherapy and other drugs available, in order to significantly impact on the treatment of childhood cancer.

This research will not only lead to improved survival rates for many different types of cancer in the coming years, but findings will also result in a decreased incidence of side-effects commonly associated with many of the drugs used.

Vicki added, “Approximately 100 people work in ScS’ head office and everyone gets involved, so we usually raise over £200 for the chosen charity.”

“On this occasion it seemed like the perfect charity to be selected as the Children’s Cancer Run is only a few weeks away, it’s nice to know we can bolster the fund raising total a little bit – some of our team have even decided to take part in the run too.”

The Children’s Cancer Run will take place on Sunday 19th May 2013 at Newcastle Racecourse, Gosforth Park. Entries are open now online at www.childrenscancerrun.co.uk.