On Friday at Museum Victoria, the HELP (Helping Endangered Leadbeater's Possum) group empowered other youth to get involved in saving Victoria's endangered wildlife, at the Kids Teaching Kids conference, supported by Healesville Sanctuary.

The group of Year 9 students from St Margaret's School in Berwick, Elly Robertson, Emily Squires and Rachel Bolitho, inspired other school students to believing they could make a tangible and positive difference to the local and global environment. The HELP team's efforts feature in a permanent collection at Museum Victoria which documents the experience and impact of the 2009 bushfires.

The HELP team has successfully presented their work at international conferences, youth forums and displays at conservation events, provided hands-on opportunities for other youth to learn and become involved through community tree planting days, profiled the plight of the Leadbeater's Possum through media, successfully applied for grants and raised almost $25,000 in three years.

According to the Curator, the team's work forms part of the collection as an "example of the response of young people to the Leadbeater's Possum and adds an important storyline to the Bushfire collection" and "an important historical resource for posterity".

The team spent the day in the Forest Gallery at Melbourne Museum inspiring others to save widlife. "We would be devastated if an animal went extinct in our lifetime, if we knew that there was something we could have done to save it," HELP Leader Elly said.