We thought we would share with you why we support Appeal our choosen Charity.

To understand why you need to go back 32 years ago to a documentary called “14 days in May” which followed the last 14 days of Edward Earl Johnsons life on deathrow in the USA.

Damon as a young 14 year old could not believe he was executed. Turned out Edward was innocent and wrongfully convicted. Edward’s lawyer later tracked down the real killer and interviewed him.

Years later Damon looked up on Twitter the lawyer who represented Edward in his last few weeks alive.

Clive Stafford Smith had set up and was now running @reprieve a charity that works around the world and represents many people facing death or just the wrongfully convicted aswell as rescuing innocent kids from Seria who have been kidnapped. Clive is a real superhero.

After Clive kindly exchanged tweets about Edward and the film “14 days in May” Damon noticed Clive was helping to promote the charity Appeal.

At the time they were looking for a venue to hold an event called “Bound by injustice” which was a weekend event that brought all the families from the 20+ cases together to help support them and deal with the fact that there loved ones have been wrongfully convicted.

Big Ds BBQ offered to host the event through a wedding venue they new in the Northeast of England. This though added costs and logistically wasn’t good.

We offered to pay for a venue that was more practical than what we were offering and the relationship was born.

After taking the time to do some due diligence and research the charity further Damon & Lindsay the owners of Big D’s BBQ felt it ticked all the boxes as a charity they wanted to support. They learned about the cases, researched the issues Appeal were trying to tackle and felt it was worthy of there company support.

We now aim to donate a significant amount of money each year. But we are still a small donor compared to some. The charity in our view runs a extremely tight ship when it comes to finances and operates on a modest budget. Without doubt all the staff could demand greater wages in the private sector and do it for the right reasons.

Recently Damon & Lindsay took the timeout to visit the charity in london and show some support to all the team. It was an excellent visit and they learned so much more about the charity and what great work they do, how they are funded and what the goals are for the future.

You can read about some of the cases here Appeal. Unfortunately our legal system is far from perfect and the innocent do get sent to prison fact. What we do not have is a good system to correct these mistakes. Hence we need a Charity like Appeal fighting for the people that have suffered from a miscarriage of justice.

We strongly encourage anyone interested in things like Making a Murderer or The Staircase documentary series currently on netflix to watch “14 days in May” this is widely available on youtube.

We also would encourage anyone looking for a small charity that has the ability to make a massive difference to think about supporting Appeal

As a company we will continue to support Redcar Mind, Angie Tripps memorial golf tournament, Redcar Fostering service, Reprieve along with Appeal which Damon & Lindsay have personal reasons for supporting.