HYUNDAI Help for Kids has hit a significant milestone with its fundraising efforts, passing the $5 million mark just three years after it was established as the charitable arm of Hyundai Motor Company Australia (HMCA).

First set up in January 2014, Hyundai Help for Kids is the Australian extension of Hyundai’s global Corporate Social Responsibility program, Moving The World Together, and has provided grants totaling $5,049,556 so far to a range of organisations dedicated to helping Australian children and their families in times of need.

The program is a collaboration between HMCA and its 168-strong national dealer network, with funds being raised for Hyundai Help for Kids every time a Hyundai is sold in Australia.

The family tree of charitable organisations helped by those funds currently number 18, and features such well-known names as Ronald McDonald House Charities Australia, Make a Wish Australia and the Clown Doctors.

Impressive as this effort is, it’s the individual stories of how this investment can change lives that are most inspiring, as is the case with 11-year old Eve.

Eve, the youngest of four children from a family from Coffs Harbour in NSW, is a little girl with a huge smile who suffered mysterious pains in her leg over the Easter break in 2015.

She was sent to Sydney for a week of tests, needles and a bone biopsy, which revealed the worst news any parent could hear: Eve had cancer.

Specifically, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer that would change her life – and that of her family forever.

While her father, Jeff, stayed in Coffs with her three siblings, her mother Rebecca spent months with Eve at Ronald McDonald House, which provides accommodation, love and companionship for families who need the help of the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick.

It was there that Eve endured 10 months of chemotherapy and a number of surgeries, including one to remove a cancerous tumour and replace it with a metal prosthesis from her thigh to her ankle.

It was the toughest time imaginable, but this bright and brave little girl – speaking about her experiences in the moving film Eve’s Journey – remembers the fun times; making good friends, meeting amazing people, including the hosts of Today and her favourite singer, Taylor Swift. One of her happiest memories, though, was the Clown Doctors, who “came to your bed and just make you laugh, it was really fun,” Eve recalls.

In the midst of the most serious treatment, the fact that a charity can put a smile on the face of a girl like Eve is surely something close to miraculous. And then a greater miracle, just shy of almost a year of active treatment, Eve got to ring the bell at the Sydney Children’s Hospital, which marks the day child’s treatment is over and they can go home.

Back on her feet in Coffs and at school for Year 6, Eve is taking acting lessons, smiling again, and says the Clown Doctors have inspired her to do something creative with her life. “Thanks to researchers, doctors and nurses I am here today, I just wanted to say a big thank you,” says a beaming Eve.

Her journey is just one of the thousands of difficult paths trodden by families like hers, paths that are made easier by the work of charities that Hyundai Help for Kids supports.

Eve’s life was touched by so many of these, not just the Clown Doctors and Ronald McDonald House, but the Kids Research Institute – Bone Injury Research Project at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and the Steven Walter Children’s Cancer Foundation.

Her mother, Rebecca, says that no thanks she can give to the people who helped her family will ever be enough.

“The work of organisations like Hyundai Help for Kids are the sort of thing you never really pay enough attention to, until you need them, and then you just can’t believe how wonderful they are, and how much they help families in need,” Rebecca says.

By Daniel Cotterill