Nov 16, 2016 By Luke Campbell 3 min read

Last year, Mackenzie and Teresa Fotovich celebrated their birthdays in the typical style of little girls.

Mackenzie, now a fifth grader at Our Lady of Grace Catholic School in Scott Township, had friends pile into her family’s Collier Township home with sleeping bags and pillows for a slumber party, while Teresa, a third grader at OLG, decided to celebrate in style with a princess-themed birthday party for her special day.

With their birthdays separated by just one day, the sisters decided to pursue something different this year that many children might not consider.

Instead of opening the bounty of presents stacked in front of them as their friends watched, Mackenzie and Teresa decided to perform an act of kindness for their birthday and give back to something that has already given them so much.

The sisters invited kids from their classes, siblings and friends outside of school to the Collier Township Municipal Building on Oct. 9, asking for donations rather than presents for their science-themed birthday extravaganza. Two days later, Our Lady of Grace Principal Sharon Loughran Brown was presented with $800 from their birthday party where kids made rock candy and the sisters sported homemade T-shirts with science slogans.

“It overwhelmed me,” Loughran Brown said. “I was absolutely blown away because I had no knowledge of it ahead of time.”

For Mackenzie, it not only achieved the goal of improving her understanding of her favorite school subjects – math and science – but separating them from the traditional childhood party, at least for one year.

“It was just different,” she said of this year’s plans.

The sisters’ early passion for STEM-related fields was ignited with the inclusion of a LabLearner program at Our Lady of Grace, the first school in the region to support the science-based learning initiative after completing a new laboratory, curriculum and training.

The $70,000 program funded through multiple sources, which was introduced to students in January 2016, strays away from the traditional means of learning science by completing an experiment and learning from those experiences.

“We wanted to come to a school that had a good community and focused on education,” said their mother, Stacy Fotovich. “I think there are great places for education all over the Pittsburgh area. Coming to Our Lady of Grace really shows them unselfishness on a daily basis. That’s one of the reasons they go to a Catholic school. We were also pleasantly surprised on how much this school focuses on technology and the sciences.”

With the LabLearner program already paid in full, Loughran Brown had to think of another way to spend the money raised from the party.

The decision was made easy when an opportunity presented itself to host a Fablab, a mobile fabrication lab that will come to the school for three days in April. It will allow students in third to eighth grade to complete project-based learning of a real world problem; a $3,000 effort made possible from the dedication from Mackenzie and Teresa.

“It epitomizes everything we do in catholic school when we talk about being unselfish, king and giving,” Loughran Brown said. “It’s exactly what these two have done. They have done it through action, not just words.”