24 Hour Golf at Gleneagles, Blairgowrie, and Dalmahoy

Children’s charity SPARKS (SPort Aiding medical Research for KidS) are calling all keen golfers to take on the challenge of a lifetime!

‘This event will push your golfing skills to the limit, testing your strength and stamina throughout.’

The date: Thursday 5th July 2007

Play 4 full rounds of golf at 3 of Scotland’s top courses in just 24 hours. This fantastic opportunity includes a round of night time golf with glow balls and lanterns at Gleneagles, and the chance to experience playing some of Scotland’s premier championship courses with an overnight stay at the 4 star Marriott Dalmahoy Hotel in Edinburgh, all we ask you to do is raise some much needed funds for children’s charity SPARKS.

Every year in the UK, there are around 600,000 babies born, most are born healthy. Unfortunately, 3% of these babies (nearly 1 in 30), are born with some kind of condition or disability that can affect them for life. SPARKS aims to give all children a healthy start in life by funding vital medical research into conditions and disabilities that affect newborn babies and children.

Our resident golf professional, Scott Dixon (Dalmahoy), who has accompanied and supported the event from the start, will be on hand for golfing tips and advice as well as hosting the finale of the day – a dinner and prize giving ceremony at Dalmahoy.

All golfers are asked to raise a minimum of £500 in sponsorship plus a booking fee of £50 is required to secure your place.
If you have what it takes and would like more information please call Amanda on 01224 64 64 88 or email carol@prime-promotions.com

SPARKS raise vital money for medical research into conditions and diseases that particularly affect children and newborn babies. Since 1991, SPARKS has raised over £8 million for research projects into conditions such as cleft lip and palate, clubfoot and childhood cancers.

SPARKS awarded £131,710 to Aberdeen University to research causes of Club Foot in Europe. This project started in April 2004.

Clubfoot is a common, but little researched, inborn disorder of the foot. SPARKS funding has allowed us to establish the largest series of clubfoot in the world. We have gathered lifestyle and medical information and DNA samples from more than 750 children with clubfoot, their parents and families. We seek funding to continue, and extend, our work into the causes of clubfoot by: 1) exploring a possible link we have identified with amniocentesis; 2) extending our work on folate metabolism genes; 3) studying promising candidate genes and 4) using specialized techniques in an isolated population to identify other clubfoot genes.

In recent months SPARKS awarded a further £150,000 to Aberdeen University to fund further research into this disorder.

No matter how remarkable the efforts made on our behalf, we at SPARKS are acutely aware that we will always run out of money before we run out of deserving medical research projects seeking our help. That’s a gap we’re determined to bridge, but only YOU can make it possible