Released to press on 27 January 2012
Edinburgh-based animal welfare charity OneKind launched its 100th birthday year with an animal-friendly Burns Night hosted by Kay Hamilton, The Dowager Duchess of Hamilton.
100 guests gathered at the Apex International Hotel on Thursday 26 January 2012 to enjoy an evening of music, poetry and fine vegetarian and vegan food to celebrate Scotland’s Bard and his love of nature and animals. The dinner raised over £3,000 towards OneKind’s ambitious plans to end animal cruelty through education.
Highlights of the evening included an Address to the Haggis by Professor Norman Macdonald with a verse in Gaelic, a fine rendition of the Scots poem ‘The Canny Hen’ by the charity’s former chairman Murray McGrath, as well as a performance of Burns songs from Laurie Crump and Rhoda Welsh, a folk duo from Stevenson College, Edinburgh. OneKind’s Director of Policy Libby Anderson offered an insightful and witty Immortal Memory, and the evening was rounded off with a triumphant recital of Tam o’ Shanter by Fiona Grant Robertson.
OneKind was founded by Lady Hamilton’s ancestor - Nina, The Duchess of Hamilton - 100 years ago as the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection. Since then the organisation, formerly named Advocates for Animals, has campaigned to save wild, domestic and farmed animals from cruelty and mistreatment. This includes campaigns to protect seals from being shot, to end animal snaring, to ban hunting with dogs and the use of animals in experimentation.
OneKind is asking animal lovers to donate their birthday in 2012 to celebrate OneKind’s 100 years, by requesting their friends and family donate to OneKind instead of buying birthday gifts.
Kirsty Connell, OneKind’s Fundraiser, said: “Robert Burns has inspired OneKind since its earliest days, with his beautiful odes to nature capturing our vision of a better world where people and animals are reconnected. Looking now to the future, it’s wonderful to launch OneKind’s centenary and our ambitious education plan with such a fantastic dinner enjoyed by so many supporters.”
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For further information please contact Fin Robertson at OneKind on 0131 225 6039 or 07590 428845. fin.robertson@onekind.org
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