The unconditional love that two of our Woodend siblings have for their younger brother has led them to sacrifice hours of planning and hard work to raise funds to support their brother, Koa’s health needs.  Reef and Mahala have chosen to raise awareness and funds for children with Downs Syndrome all from their own initiatives.  Reef has chosen to ski 213 kilometres and Mahala has helped establish the ‘Go Fund Me’ page to raise $21 300 for children with Downs Syndrome to receive the support they need in mainstream schools. The significance of the number ‘213’ is because the majority of children with Downs Syndrome have Trisomy 21.  With this type of Downs Syndrome, each cell in the body has 3 separate copies of chromosome 21 instead of 2 copies.

Reef and Mahala are certainly showing Woodend’s school values of: ‘Effort matters’ and ‘Being good citizens’ as their efforts will assist many children with Downs Syndrome not only their precious sibling.  We are proud of their growth mindset, initiative and determination.  Take a look at their T 21 Ski For Life initiative at:

https://au.gofundme.com

We thank those students who were able to wear odd, bright and/favourite coloured socks to raise awareness about Down Syndrome last Monday 22nd March.