Charity sleep-out a Byte Night to remember for the Keystone team

Once again, Keystone lawyers took part in Byte Night this October, the UK’s largest corporate sleep-out, to raise funds for “Action for Children”

Keystone lawyers Paul Renney and Clare Back, and Keystone client Bevan Thomas from Newsflare, an online video news community and marketplace for user-generated video content, spent a night in a churchyard in central London, while lawyers Clare Lucas and Ben Garbett slept out in a public square in Bristol, to raise funds and awareness for the charity. The response so far has been phenomenal, with the event raising a staggering £934,000, and it is hoped this will exceed the £1m mark once all the donations are in.

There are around 80,000 young people without homes in the UK, with many forced to sleep rough, in turn being exploited and turning to drugs and prostitution to get by. A significant proportion of these young people go on to self-harm or attempt suicide, sometimes sadly with success. Hundreds of thousands of other young people simply don’t get the care or opportunities they need and are neglected, ill-treated and abused.

Action for Children runs 650 services in local communities across the UK, supporting pre-school children to young adults, as well as parents and parents-to-be, babies, young carers, disabled children and their families.

The team heard first hand, on the night, of the difference that Action for Children makes to some of the young people it has helped. It was humbling and heart-warming. If you’d like to donate, there’s still time. Simply visit the team’s fundraising page or go straight to the charity’s website.

Thankfully the weather held out this year, but sleeping outside for just one night made the team really appreciate all the more how hard it would be if this was their reality, night after night.