A TEAM of teenage girls banded together to raise vital funds for a cause that hits incredibly close to home.

Friends and schoolmates - Grace Simpson, Rosie Barnes, Jess Power, Olivia Ellis and Maja Stochla - realised that team work really does make the dream work after raising key awareness and funds in support of World Cancer Day.

The international awareness day, held annually on February 4, promotes cancer prevention, early detection and treatment.

The compassionate group of Penistone Grammar School post-16 students raised nearly £300, selling purple ribbons handcrafted by Maja.

The cause hits especially close to home for Olivia, after her dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year.

Olivia said: “I’ve always been very interested in helping our school community since year seven.

“I wanted to continue during post-16, so we do a lo of charity work, especially in terms of organisation for events.

“In year 11 I was head girl and in the future I’m going to study law at Durham University.

“The ribbons for Word Cancer Day represent all different forms of cancer, which is something we wanted to highlight.

“We also organised a ‘wear purple’ day where everybody donated money and we sold a lot of ribbons.

“My friend Maja made most of the ribbons because she’s a bit of a glue gun fanatic, we really couldn’t have done it without her.

“Last year we found out that my dad has stage four cancer, so that’s something that’s been difficult.

“My dad started with prostate cancer, but by the time we were aware of it, it had spread to his bones - so unfortunately, it’s not something that can be cured.

“It beat us down a bit, but what me and my friends did is my way of showing my support for him whilst he went through chemotherapy.

“I really wanted to highlight cancer awareness and it’s very important to me, I definitely want to continue with it in the future.”

Maja added: “I helped my friends to raise money for World Cancer Day.

“I made little ribbons with safety pins on them and I made over 200 of them.

“We walked around selling these ribbons and talking to people about World Cancer Day - and how important it is to raise awareness for different kinds of cancer.

“It felt so great to see the final tally that we managed to raise.

“It felt like such an accomplishment being able to send off that money.”

The girls are in the running at tonight’s awards in the Community Team category.