Not long after their crusade to implement solar panels here at the home of the Stallions, the Ecology Action Team, or EAT Club for short, has set their sights on a new endeavor: the battle against cancer.

The EAT Club has amassed a large recognition in recent times, both inside and out of the campus grounds. Other environmentally-conscious clubs from schools such as Dana Hills, San Clemente, and Tesoro have partnered up with our own Ecology Action Team through the process.

The result? Over 1,400 people signed a petition to install solar panels here at SJHHS, a number that undoubtedly impressed those at the CUSD board meeting when presented to them last August.

Now the group is aiming to use the same grassroots-technique to produce a major contribution towards developing new treatments for cancer. By collecting dirt samples from various areas of land, undiscovered species of fungi with unseen abilities to combat cancer can be discovered and reproduced for those who need it most.

“Cancer is something that is so prevalent and so common that everyone can relate to it, and so I think that’s why it’s something that’s really cool to do. I mean because this is literally you participating in cancer research. You’re helping to find the cure, and that opportunity is very rare,” said Russell Tran, president of the EAT Club.

The idea was first conceived after the discovery of the Natural Product Discovery Group’s website, the home of an organization dedicated to drug discovery through the research of natural compounds. Such compounds, like fungi, are obtained through dirt-collection kits distributed across the nation by The University of Oklahoma.

Separate groups and organizations can request these kits in bulk and hand them out individually. Once the samples are obtained, they are then sent back to The University of Oklahoma’s NPDG for research and analysis.

The EAT Club’s first wave of dirt-sampling kits was collected on Sept. 20, meeting great success. Follow-up waves are currently being planned with a larger scale in mind, allowing even more students the chance to participate.

As many are aware, cancer is a tragic disease that can differ drastically from forms such as brain cancer all the way to melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. In addition to threatening one’s life, cancer will more often than not have a severe impact on the personal aspects and activities of those it inflicts.

Katie Hawley, a two-time cancer survivor, shares what she experienced, “I figured out in 2009 I had neuroblastoma, and then it came back in 2013 and it spread to my bones… I was a soccer player, so my dad would take me out of chemo sometimes to go to a soccer game”.

When introduced to the EAT Club’s new project, Katie Hawley said, “I think that it’s a good idea to use anything that can possibly help other people… I would encourage [this] completely because anything that can beat cancer sounds good to me.”

In regards to the future, the EAT Club is applying for grants from various organizations in order to increase the number of kits they can supply to students. One such organization is the Disney Friends for Change program. These kits are not limited to the Stallions, however. The EAT Club intends to use the grant funds to also supply kits to those at local high schools, and even middle schools.

“We want to keep this going, because it’s not like there’s any dead end. It’s not like there’s anything to stop us from growing, right? We can keep trying, and we can always find more and have higher chances of discovering more and more potential cures,” Tran said.