Staff members at Walkers have kicked off another year of their popular ‘Dress Down Day’ program, this time coming together to raise money for the Cayman Islands Crisis Centre (CICC) while getting to enjoy some tasty treats at the same time.

In recognition of the serious issue of domestic violence, Walkers’ Human Resources Department organised a special ‘Dress Down Day’ where staff made a donation to the Crisis Centre in order to dress in casual clothes on Friday 10 February. In addition to the dress down fundraising drive, Tiffany Laurie, Executive Legal Secretary with Walkers’ Dubai office, baked a batch of cupcakes for the staff in the Cayman Islands office to buy in aid of the CICC.

With the combination of dress down donations and cupcake sale receipts, Walkers’ staff collected a grand total of CI$1,467.50 for the CICC, which was presented to Executive Director Renee Carroll-Grate. This effort has got Walkers’ 2012 ‘Dress Down Day’ program off to an excellent start to the year, having raised over CI$30,000 for local good causes in 2011.

Tiffany Laurie, who formerly worked with Walkers in Cayman before relocating to Dubai, is a master baker and designed the cupcakes especially for the Cayman Islands Crisis Centre. “The people involved with the Crisis Centre are wonderful. They work so hard and dedicate their lives to bring peace and joy during devastating times,” said Tiffany, whose cupcake design featured a butterfly representing freedom and a purple ribbon to represent awareness of abuse.

All Walkers employees in Cayman get the chance to opt into the ‘Dress Down Day’ program and in return for making a monthly donation can wear casual clothes to the office on the last Friday of every month.  Charitable causes are selected quarterly by the firm, with input from staff members, who get the opportunity to nominate a particular organisation. The program is run by Senior Human Resources Administrator Kitti Chambers and Human Resources Administrator Keyreaye Bodden.

The local charities that received funds from Walkers’ Dress Down Day programme in 2011 were Big Brothers, Big Sisters (CI$5,585.66), The Pines Retirement Home (CI$5,543.66), the Special Olympics (CI$5,209.00) and CI$6,528.77 for Feed our Future, which aims to solve childhood hunger in Cayman.

In addition, a number of special ‘Dress Down Days’ are held throughout the course of the year, giving staff members additional opportunities to dress down and raise more funds for charity. A total of CI$7,844 was collected in 2011 for special ‘Dress Down Days’. Among the good causes benefiting were: the Sunrise Adult Training Centre, which received CI$965, the Cayman Islands Cancer Society which received CI$1,955 and a collection to raise money for food for the children of Anna Ebanks-Evans, organised by the Lighthouse School, raised CI$1,439.

“An important element of our ‘Dress Down Days’ is that employees regularly make suggestions as to which charities should benefit and as such we have assisted a wide range of important causes over the past seven years,” said Victoria Hew, Human Resources Director with Walkers. “For example, Feed our Future has been an extremely popular charity among our staff and we intend to make them an annual dress down charity, while for the first quarter of this year we are collecting for the Humane Society.”