TMSG: This 10-Year-Old Has Raised Over $100K For Rare Diseases
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Dana Perella was just 7-years-old when she found out her best friend Mila was diagnosed with a rare and fatal disease called Batten. Perella was determined to help fund research for a cure, so that's when she started baking and selling cookies.
Every weekend, Perella would go door-to-door pulling a wagon filled with cookies to sell to her neighbors. She met her $1,000 goal in 3 months. Then she decided to take her message outside of her town of Boulder, Colorado. Perella started a GoFundMe page called Cookies4Cures and it went viral. That's when Perella's friends jumped in to help her bake and holding cookie pop-up events where they educated people about rare diseases and offered cookies in exchange for donations.
Her helpers spiraled into a team of nearly 100 volunteers from family, friends, teachers to strangers. In the end, they raised over $56,000 for Batten research. That money led to the first-ever treatment for Mila's form of Batten.
Three years later, Perella is continuing her Cookies4Cures campaign. She has helped other children with rare childhood diseases by baking over 12,000 cookies to help fund research, translating to over $100,000.