Each year in October and November, the fall student council at Eanes Elementary School holds a fundraiser to raise money for a charitable cause. Student representatives for the third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classes propose good causes, and the Council votes to decide which organization will receive the donations gathered at the school each fall.

This year, the $2,600 raised by Eanes Elementary students went to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Third-grader Mac Rung suggested the cause. He made a presentation to his fellow student council members, and he gave them information about CF, along with wristbands, information packets and T-shirts from the foundation.

Mac knows a lot about CF. He lives with the disease. He told his fellow students how he takes a pill every day to battle its effects and how he does chest therapy twice a day. He brought in his breathing machine and let everyone see what it looked like.

“I have cystic fibrosis,” he said simply. “It’s a disease that kills two to three people a day in the U.S. The average lifespan used to be a lot younger. Kids were dying by the time they got to preschool. Now people with CF are living to be 70.”

Mac said he wanted to raise money to fund research that will help find new medications to fight the disease.

“They have actually come very close to coming up with a pill that would cure a lot of CF,” he said.

Mac got a lot of support from his fellow students at Eanes Elementary in raising money for the organization.

“A lot of my family members have diseases, and I wanted to raise money that would let people do research on a disease, so people would know there is hope, that there are people who want to help,” said Justin Mellenbruch, Eanes Elementary Student Council president.

The Student Council made a presentation to the school about CF. Student volunteers talked to parents in cars dropping off their children in the mornings. They made announcements on KMBC, the televised morning program at the school. They put a collection jar in each classroom. They offered ice cream parties as an enticement to the classes that raised the most money.

Justin got his grandparents to donate. Kindergartner Carter Barksdale collected money while trick-or-treating. Fifth-grade twins Katie and Lucy Hamill took information packets out to families in their neighborhood and collected donations.

“One first-grader, Audrey Jones, came into my office every morning with a little more change,” said counselor Michelle Corbett, a Student Council sponsor along with third-grade teacher Helen Hutchings. “I asked her mom about it finally, and she said Audrey kept asking if she could do chores every day to earn some money. She never told her mom what it was for.”

Bit by bit, the money trickled in until the students at Eanes Elementary had raised more than $2,500. Mac’s mom, Amy Rung, contacted the Central Texas Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and executives came to the school to accept the final check on Nov. 19. The money the school raised will be given to the national Cystic Fibrosis Foundation office to help fund research into the disease, said Amie Holland, event manager.

“We were really excited to go and visit the school and get to be a part of something like this,” she said. “These kids worked very, very hard. It’s the most money their school ever raised for a nonprofit organization. Mac did a really good job communicating and informing others about CF.”

Mac is matter-of-fact in his discussions about CF. He has been living with the disease for a long time. He had a stomach operation when he was one day old, a significant indication of CF. An active and very intelligent third grader, he is in the top 5 percent of CF patients health wise.

“My dad said a pill that will probably cure most of CF will come out by 2014,” Mac said. “I strongly think that we’re going to find a cure. If one school could do this, I hope other schools can see that they can do something too.”