WHILE the rest of us caught up on television and ate junk food on the lounge during last year’s lockdown, CMRI’s Maroota Fundraising Committee were hard at work.

They may be a small committee but what they lack in size, they make up in determination.

Maroota was started in 1966 by a founding member who had a genetic blood disorder in the family. Today there are eight members of the committee, including mother Noelene and daughter Kaye, who are determined to keep doing their bit for medical research.

When they had to cancel their regular fashion parades, shopping centre market stall, and bingo nights – Kaye had an idea. She saw the need for masks, so started making them to sell.

“We have a shop in Windsor, and we started sewing our own masks to sell, and we couldn’t keep up with the demand,’’ Kaye said. “They were selling out faster than we could make them.

“After that we decided to keep busy by sewing scrunchies. I worked in a factory when I was growing up, so I’m used to just sitting there working away. I’ve always enjoyed it. It was really something to do when there wasn’t much else to do! I’d put the scrunchies together at night, and mum would sew them all. She did them all herself – just over 800.’’

All the denim scrunchies have been made to be sold by CMRI as part of Jeans for Genes. As scrunchies have come back into fashion for young girls to use as hair ties, (especially favoured by the netballers), they have sold like hot cakes. In 2019, Noelene had made 1000 scrunchies by herself.

Kaye said it was great to be able to continue working for CMRI during lockdown and was pleasantly surprised, as restrictions eased, that they raised $8,000 through an intimate COVID-safe fashion parade and their regular market stall.

“Most of the money we raised was just pure donations on the day of the fashion parade, we were just staggered, it was lovely.’’

You can buy one of the handmade denim scrunchies online: https://shop.cmri.org.au/produ...