RUMFORD — Zaraya Simard has seven months to raise $8,000 to jump-start her career in endangered wildlife rehabilitation more than 8,000 miles from home in South Africa.

Simard, 16, is also taking a double load of classes this school year to graduate from Mountain Valley High School in spring 2012 at the age of 17. She is on a 3-year program to graduate and currently has a 3.8 grade-point average.

“I wanted to do it in three years to help prepare myself for college,” she said.

“That was my main goal, but then I got accepted into this program to go to Africa, and that will do better for me than going to college, because the experience I get from it is hands-on training that jobs in the field I want to do need.”

Those jobs also have a minimum age of 18. The overseas program is the Africa Conservation Experience and her 6-week internship is at Khulula Wild Care in Cape Town, South Africa. Their minimum age requirement is 17.

To get there, she must fly to Johannesburg International Airport, and then take a 6-hour bus ride. The internship costs $6,000. It doesn’t include her flight, which is around $1,300, or money for food and expenses, all of which must be raised by July.

Her job would entail helping to raise wildlife babies whose parents were killed by poachers so that they can eventually be released into the wild — animals like baby lions, baby rhinos, primates and a variety of African wildlife.

“This internship will help me get into places like the TIGERS Rare Species Fund in Myrtle Beach, S.C.,” Zaraya said.

“They were one of the main ones I want to do, but they said you have to be 18. They have a 2-year internship that pays you to be there, $400 a week and you live there and the whole time you’re there you raise a baby animal.”

Eventually, she wants to work to conserve snow leopards, the topic of a seventh-grade school project that prompted her career choice.

“When I get way older, I want to be on a conservation team to help snow leopards, because they’re really beautiful animals to me and there are only 6,000 left in the world,” Zaraya said.

College, however, for her desired field of employment — preserving endangered wildlife — costs from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, she said.

“Zoology wouldn’t help me because I wouldn’t have any hands-on with animals,” Zaraya said. “I wouldn’t be working to help them survive. I’d just be in a zoo and feeding animals. That’s not what I want. I want to help animals survive and to conserve endangered animals.”

Despite the study load, Zaraya and her mother, Becky Simard, a Rumford native, are trying to raise the money by developing fundraisers and placing donation collection jars in several River Valley area businesses. They’ve raised about $300 so far.

To seek donations, Zaraya has also created a Facebook page: Zaraya’s Africa Fund at www.facebook.com/pages/Zarayas-Africa-Fund/230579923680001.

The redheaded teen has also lined up six metal rock bands, so far, to perform from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 7, with a $5 cover at the Barnboard lounge in Rumford. The bands — Marble Socket, Hellcarver, Chubby Bunny, Powers, Woodburning Cat, and CUSS — all told her they’d play for free to help.

And Simard is working on a spaghetti feed and raffle fundraiser at the Rumford Eagles club.

Last year, Zaraya worked at Sunday River Ski Resort as a ticket checker and this winter, she’s been hired at Black Mountain of Maine in Rumford.

Previously, she also volunteered for work at John Carter’s Middle Intervale Farm in Bethel, where she fed calves and lambs and herded dairy cows. That’s what got her accepted for the internship at Khulula.

“She’s really motivated,” Simard said. “She’s not one of those kids who wants to graduate and get it over with early, she wants to do it to go start her career, basically.”

“I’ve been doing stuff from the moment I wake up to when I go to bed — schoolwork and fundraising,” Zaraya said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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