AT just 14, Williamstown’s Eve Alexiadis has endured so much, but her heart is set on helping others.
Eve is a HeartKid, the name given to about 2000 babies born with heart defects each year in Australia.
“I have a hole in my heart and a leak in my valve,” she said last week.
“I had surgery when I was two years old and five years old. I had to have one wire removed last year because I grew too fast, too quickly and I snapped the wire.”
Eve’s fund-raising and charity work as a HeartKids ambassador so impressed builders and designers The Canny Group that it commissioned Melbourne street artist Makatron to paint a mural about Eve’s story on the front wall of its Lubelso Concept Home in Spring Road, Malvern.
The mural launched a partnership between the group and HeartKids.
Eve says the mural shows there are no limitations for HeartKids.
“For HeartKids I would say, ‘You will get through it’,” she said.
“To non-HeartKids, I would encourage them just to know about the cause as much as they can and put themselves in the shoes of the little kids that go through it.” One in 100 children, or six a day, are born with heart disease daily in Australia.
Eve’s mum, Alex, found out when she was about 32 weeks pregnant that her unborn baby’s heart chambers were bigger on one side. “It was really tough because I hadn’t even given birth and we already knew there was a problem . . . you just stay strong for the child.”
