Smithton High School’s grade seven What’s Up? class are doing whatever they can to raise awareness for their chosen causes, with groups of varying sizes picking a charity close to their hearts and finding a way to raise money or awareness for it this term.

Toby Randall, Hunter Sutton-Collins, Caiden Gardner and Nathan Young chose to promote Parkinson’s Disease awareness by trying to rack up an accumulated 80 kilometres around the school’s oval when they have What’s Up on Tuesday mornings.

“We’re trying to walk around the oval and clock up the kilometres, we’ve covered 17.25 kilometres so far,” Caiden said.

“We’ve had about four periods to get there, which is roughly 200 minutes,” Hunter said.

The group chose Parkinson’s Disease because Hunter’s uncle is affected by the progressive nervous system disorder.

“First we picked alzheimers disease, and then brain cancer, and then Hunter mentioned his uncle so we went with that,” Toby said.

“Its very rewarding because we get physical exercise which has a lot of mental benefits, while also raising awareness at the same time,” Nathan said.

Tess Pay, Kishani King, Nevaeh Tuxworth and Bridie Payne have taken a different approach, organising a bake sale to raise funds for BeyondBlue.

“We wanted to raise money for people who need help so that they always have somewhere to go for support,” Bridie said.

The group has been cooking both at school and at home, cooking different types of baked goodies, but nothing with eggs and nuts due to allergies.

The girls have been fortunate enough to be sponsored by IGA, who have donated a number of ingredients to offset the cost, and have received a lot of help from the Circular Head Aboriginal Corporation. The bake sale will be held at 11am on September 24 outside IGA.

“We chose BeyondBlue because we don’t see people raising awareness for it as much,” Kishani said.

“You can’t see mental health issues, so it’s important to keep people talking about it.” Tess said.

Leah Sharman, Mia Schuuring and Shayley Russell are also baking to raise money, but for a different set of palates.

“We’re making pumpkin and peanut butter treats for dogs as well as flour, tuna and egg treats for cats,” Mia said.

“We are also in the process of designing some toys for pets, hopefully we can sell them at the vets.”

All funds raised will go to RSPCA in Devonport.

Marlea Willie and Bella Gent are making some creative clay creations to sell as key rings and are yet to decide on a cause.

The pair mould clay into whacky shapes and then poke holes through them to make beads, before firing them in a kiln and threading them into a keychain.

“Each one takes about 45 minutes to make from start to finish,” Bella said.

Toby Randall, Hunter Sutton-Collins, Caiden Gardner and Nathan Young are racking up the kilometres to raise awareness for Parkinson’s Disease.