Nine years ago, Rachel Moss’s smiling five-year-old face was featured on the front page of The Telegram, holding a craft she had made. It was a little fridge magnet created with melted beads, patterned in the shape of a bunny face.
“The Janeway helped me and was nice, so I want to help the Janeway,” Rachel said at the time, referring to when she broke her leg and needed a cast. “I’m going to give them the money so they can buy an X-ray machine, and my dad doesn’t think that I’m going to raise enough.”
Think again, Dad: on Sunday Rachel and her sister Julianne will present their 10th cheque to the Janeway Foundation, during the annual Janeway Telethon, representing a total over the years of close to $40,000.
“It’s been amazing,” Rachel, now 14, says of the charitable enterprise she and Julianne started as near toddlers. “It’s so rewarding to know we’re helping someone else from a fun little craft.”
“Some people might think it’s a lot of work, and sometimes it is,” adds Julianne, 11. “But spending a couple hours making magnets could save someone’s life.”
The girls’ father came up with the idea to sell the magnets for the Janeway, after Rachel made him one as a present.
Over the years they’ve designed animals, seasonal shapes, flowers and more, selling them for a donation of the buyer’s choice and even shipping them to troops in Afghanistan.
They count musician Alan Doyle, actor Allan Hawco, former premier Danny Williams and former prime minister Stephen Harper among their satisfied customers, and even caught the eye of Perler Beads, the manufacturer of their beads of choice, which sent along a discount and more than 70,000 beads for their efforts.
Rachel and Julianne were presented with the Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award in 2013, becoming the youngest-ever recipients.
Wanting to increase their sales for the Janeway, the girls branched out into hair clips and pins, and expanded their fundraising efforts to include school-based projects like a volleyball tournament and youth dances.
They sell ice cream once a week to their fellow students at Brookside Intermediate School in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s, adding the money raised to their Janeway donation.
“Rachel and Julianne are amazing. They are helpful, generous, giving and a true embodiment of what Brookside Intermediate students should be, and they do it with a smile and a pure heart,” principal Leo Etchegary told The Telegram.
Last fall, Rachel and Julianne began offering some new items — with a special story — for sale. During the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the girls’ aunt and uncle in Gander hosted in their home Brigitte Schönfelder and her husband, a German couple who had been among the 7,000 or so airline passengers stranded in the community for a week. A few years later the couple returned to Gander for a visit and happened to see Rachel and Julianne on the telethon.
Not long after that, the girls received in the mail, through their aunt, a package from Brigitte, containing tiny hand-knit sock keychains, made specifically to sell in aid of the Janeway. A second package followed, full of more knit goods.
So far, Rachel and Julianne have made about $300 from the sale of the keychains, which are available at Twisted Sisters Boutik in downtown St. John’s.
“We’re really grateful to her,” Rachel says of Brigitte.
Rachel and Julianne are set to appear on the Janeway Telethon Sunday afternoon, and they want to wait until then to reveal the amount of this year’s donation. They will be joined by their little brother, James, who is almost 3 and will present his own little donation of money earned by selling cookies.
The girls say they are always thinking of new ways to raise money for the Janeway, and have no plans to slow down their efforts.
“It’s just something we’ve always done,” Rachel explains. “And the telethon is something we always look forward to.”
To view the girls’ products and help them in their fundraising efforts for the Janeway, visit them on Facebook by searching for “Rachel & Julianne’s Special Project.”
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
