10-year-old girl raises thousands of dollars for NICU

Thanks to some hard work and a heart of gold, one 10-year-old girl from Fort Qu’Appelle has donated thousands of dollars to help save babies’ lives.

Catherine Okolita has been fundraising for the Z99 Radiothon since she was five years old. Money raised during the radiothon goes toward providing equipment for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Regina’s General Hospital.

Her mom, Caralen, said it all started when they went to a park together and noticed how dirty it was.

“I had kind of done the classic parental thing of like, ‘This is disgusting, we’re not coming back until somebody cleans this park up, let’s go,’ ” she said.

Catherine, who was five at the time, decided she would be that somebody to clean up the park.

“It was something super-small, she got together some friends and some family and we cleaned the whole park and then it was like, ‘OK, now what can I do?’ ” Caralen said. “For whatever reason, helping out and accomplishing something even at five years old just gave her the drive to do more.”

During a road trip, Catherine heard about the radiothon while listening to the radio.

“She had kind of already been doing a few things over the course of several months already and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, those babies, I want to help with that,’ ” Caralen said.

For the first few years, she created keychains and sold them to raise money. She has since turned her attention to holding an online auction where people can bid on items.

This year she raised $23,156 — the most she has ever raised at one time.

“It makes me feel happy and really proud of everyone,” Catherine said. “I was so excited and I was like, ‘Holy’ and the whole way that we were driving to the city, I was bouncing up and down in my seat.”

Since she first started raising money, she has collected just over $41,000. Her fundraising efforts can be found on Facebook.