Ben, who cannot walk or talk is in need of an extensive list of costly equipment and therapies to help him with mobility and communication.

Having been approached by Ben's parents, Laura James and Gavin Henry, initially to donate a raffle prize towards fundraising efforts to improve Ben's quality of life, JG Ross Sales and Marketing Manager Michelle Wainwright thought the family orientated business could do much more to help.

Michelle said: "Most of our staff have children, many of whom, like myself, have a child of a similar age to Ben, so deciding to go that extra mile and organise our own fundraising opportunity seemed the most natural thing to do. We were in the process of deciding which products to have on our Taste of Grampian stand and it seemed obvious to sell a product that raised cash for Ben."

The company had originally planned to donate money purely from fudge sales but observing the goodwill shown by the general public on the stand, it was decided to add money from sales of their new recipe pancake.

Commercial Director Graeme Ross, who visited the stand on the day, commented: "There was such a great rapport between staff and visitors. Customers at our stand had read about our drive to support Ben and wanted to buy other products together with the fudge to raise as much money as possible. So it was decided, on the day, to include the sales from the freshly made hot pancakes too."

Working on the stand with Michelle were retail manager, Margaret Collie and area supervisor, Rhona Greig, while production manager, George Robertson and bakery foreman, David Barrie produced over 1,000 hot pancakes during the day.

Michelle added: "The total money raised also includes £88 raised solely by customers of our Oldmeldrum bakery shop on the same Saturday. The Meldrum shop staff decided they too could do something to help Ben and wonderfully encouraged customers to donate to a charity box. We are so lucky to have such thoughtful staff."

Speaking about the generosity of JG Ross, Laura said: "The money raised has been earmarked to buy communication and special needs software with a touch screen. It has a template so you can add pictures of your own and Ben can make choices by touching the picture he wants. It is educational and he can play games, for instance 'pop the balloon'. The software has different levels of difficulty and will last him until he is about ten years old."

To round off a brilliant day, the JG Ross stand scooped the prize for Best Large Food Stand, which was judged by celebrity chef Tony Tobin.
Anyone wishing to make a donation to Ben or find out about future fundraising events log onto www.fund4ben.co.uk.