Video: Student Raises Money for Juvenile Diabetes Research

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By Chad Groening

FULTON, Miss. (WCBI) – A Mississippi University for Women student returned to her hometown of Fulton, Saturday, to raise money for a worthy cause.

The 4th annual Monster Mash 5K and Fun Run kicked off to raise money for juvenile diabetes.

Shelby Prestage, who contracted Type one diabetes when she was 11 years old started the fundraiser as a senior project when she was at Itawamba AHS.

She says more than 17 million Americans suffer from Type one diabetes and it has nothing to do with diet.

“Alot of misconceptions about diabetes is they each too candy or they’re overweight or something,” Prestage said. “But Type one has nothing to do with either of the two. It’s actually triggered by an illness in your body so it can be genetic or like in myself it was triggered by an ear infection the summer before and it just happened to trigger diabetes so it’s got nothing to do with too much candies.”

One of the teams taking part in the Monster Mash 5K was the Itawamba AHS cross country team, which used the event as a warmup for the state meet.

Prestage says all of the money goes to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

She hopes to raise $5,000.