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You are here: Home | Magazine | Holidays/Events | Outstanding Family Awards 2010 | Candis Outstanding Family of the Year Awards 2009 | The Barnes family

The Barnes family

East Midlands regional winner

The Barnes family

From: Bothamshall, Nottinghamshire

Despite dealing daily with the challenging care needs and chronic ill health of two boys with cystic fibrosis (CF) - an incurable disease that affects the lungs and digestive system - Lorraine Barnes, with the support of her whole family, has raised a staggering £120,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

The Barnes started working with the charity in 2005, when Lorraine completed her first skydive. She and six friends raised over £6,000 and with that, Lorraine was hooked on the challenge of fundraising.

As well as organising sponsored walks and two black tie balls a year, the family also design a calendar, as well as T-shirts to raise funds and awareness for CF. This year alone the family have raised over £50,000.

The calendars feature pictures of children and families affected by CF, but for 2010's edition Lorraine, along with 14 other mothers of children who suffer from CF, posed nude à la Calendar Girls.

To ease the symptoms of their condition and prolong their lives, Daniel and Joe both require twice-daily physiotherapy sessions and machines to assist their breathing, as well as a high-calorie diet and a huge amount of medication.

Every spare moment the couple have is used to work on fundraising projects. Although Lorraine is the central driving force behind the family's fundraising, everyone in
the family contributes. Nigel works on finer details such as table plans for balls and mail outs, while Daniel and Joe regularly model the CF awareness-raising T-shirts designed by Lorraine, and have starred in the CF calendars she's put together.

"It's a brilliant buzz organising successful events and raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust," says Lorraine. "We really want to contribute to helping the charity continue its research as much as we can. CF is still a life-threatening condition and having two sons with it has been scary at times. I don't ever want to say goodbye to them and every time I hear of another loss to the condition, it spurs us on to raise even more money. We just hope we can help make a difference in some way."

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Click here to view more photographs of the Barnes family

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