Spectacle Wearer of the Year raises a record-breaking £88,000 to support Kidscape

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Specsavers’ annual awards ceremony for the UK’s most stylish glasses-wearers took place in central London last night, supporting Kidscape’s work for a fantastic 9th consecutive year.

Hosted by Rylan Clark-Neal and Kimberly Wyatt, and attended by a host of celebrity guests, the event saw Derek Dubery from Northern Ireland crowned the 2016 Spectacle Wearer of the Year, winning £10,000 and a fabulous trip to New York.

During the evening guests were shown a video featuring a family Kidscape has recently helped to combat bullying. Janine and Havva spoke wonderfully about what we were able to do to support them, and we were delighted that they were able to be at the event in person.

£88,000 raised for Kidscape

Specsavers donated £1 to Kidscape for every entry to this year’s competition, and combined with ticket sales and a raffle during the evening, the grand total of £88,000 was raised to support our work! We are so grateful to everybody who helped to make the evening such a wonderful success – thank you all for your hard work and generosity.

We spoke to Derek after his wonderful victory, and he told us: "The Specsavers competition got me thinking about the effect glasses had on me as a kid, and how much it’s affected my whole life. I wouldn’t say I was bullied because of my glasses but I was very much stereotyped."

"I wore glasses from the age of 2, all the way through school. If you were wearing glasses at that time, there was no chance of being considered cool... I was labelled ‘brainy’ and would be last to be picked for football. For kids it’s very important to have positive role models who wear glasses, that makes a huge difference."

"When I was growing up the only role models for kids with glasses were the Milky Bar Kid; Joe 90, who took his glasses off any time he did cool stuff; and Brains from Thunderbirds. Brains really summed it up – the one that wears glasses is the 'brainy geek'."

"These days there are so many more role models – if kids are being bullied because they’re wearing glasses, it’s vital they’ve got strong people to look up to."

Janine and Havva's story

You can watch Janine and Havva’s story below.

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