LITTLE Phoebe Maddison is so fed up with missing out on time with her friends that she has started her own fundraising drive to help find a cure for diabetes.

The seven-year-old St Catherine’s Primary School pupil was diagnosed with type one diabetes three years ago. Last month, she started raising money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which is trying to find a cure.

She has raised £300 so far and plans to hold cake sales, tea parties and sing in a concert in the next few months.

“I don’t really like having diabetes because in school everybody goes to lunch before me. It’s a bit upsetting, I have to go last,” she said.

“Everybody gets to play and have their dinner straight away and I have to have a blood test.”

“I want to raise this money to find a cure for me and other people with it.

“I know that more children have my condition and I would love to be able to help them also.”

Diabetes is a long-term condition caused by too much glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood.

Type one diabetes, which is hereditary and the rarest type, occurs when the body produces no insulin.

Phoebe will need four insulin injections every day for the rest of her life until a cure is found.

She sang Katy Perry’s Firework at a concert in Poole for the cause last month, along with X Factor 2007 winner Steve Brook-stein and Britain’s Got Talent’s Twist and Pulse.

And she will sing at Pop 4 Diabetes in Bournemouth in October.

“I am going to be doing a cake sale with my mum in the street too,” she said.

Phoebe has also held a car boot sale and her father, Antony, has run the Bristol 10k for the foundation for the last two years, raising about £800 in total.

Antony, 39, a police officer of Abbeyfields, said: “The whole family is involved. She has accepted diabetes really well but she just wants to get better.

“At this moment in time there is no cure but they are looking at stem cell research and ways of reactivating the pancreas.

“We just want to raise awareness. The charity is excited about Phoebe’s fundraising.”

To donate to Phoebe’s fundraising drive visit www.justgiving.com/phoebe-maddison. For information about the charity visit http://www.jdrf.org.uk.