MEDIA: Primary-aged kids raise $14, 000 for brain cancer research
8- and 9-year old Canberrans, Zara Skepev and Mila Costa, have a creative – and effective – way to help eliminate brain cancer.
The good friends teamed up last year to make and sell hundreds of earrings and donate all proceeds to Professor Leonie Quinn's research at Australian National University.
The idea came to Zara after her mother, Milena, toured Professor Quinn's laboratory as part of her own brain cancer research charity activity.
Milena told Professor Quinn about her daughter’s dream to become a scientist, but the girl was worried she couldn’t also be a mother.
“Zara had spoken to me a couple of weeks prior to our meeting, and she was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to be a scientist … because she can’t be a mum,” Milena told Riotact and The Canberra Times.
“She understands that women make a lot of sacrifices for their careers to raise children, and I reiterated to her that it would definitely be possible … but she had that very big doubt.”
When Professor Quinn heard this, she told Milena Zara should absolutely come for her own tour to see that “90 per cent of the people here are female and they’re either mothers or grandmothers”.
It was the day before Zara and Mila’s ANU tour that Zara had the big idea to make clay earrings they could sell at a stall locally in Manuka and support Professor Quinn’s work. The young scientists asked Milena to take them to buy supplies right away and spent the majority of their school holidays making the earrings from scratch.
They named their business Z and M Co Jewellery and launched a mycause fundraising page, setting an initial goal of $5,000. However, the primary school students made almost $3,000 on their first day.
So far, Zara and Mila have made more than 300 pairs of earrings and raised just over $14,000.
The girls have spoken on ABC Radio and Zara wrote an account about her experience at the girls’ school.
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