My story today tells about Jessica Markowitz, who at age 11 began a charity to help girls in Rwanda after she learned about a genocide that wiped out many of their parents.

She sends 22 girls to a rural school and is working on building a library there, using prize money she won for her efforts.

Two things seem to have been lost on some readers -- first that she is working with a local organization in Rwanda (FAWE), supporting them to take on the issue in their own country. That kind of grassroots social change can be much more profound than sending money from overseas.

LORI MARKOWITZ

Jessica spent time teaching English this summer to girls at a rural school she and her classmates are supporting in Rwanda.

And secondly that seeing the way kids live in places like Rwanda actually provides an invaluable of education for an American student. Kids in the U.S may have the kind of material wealth that is unimaginable to people in developing countries. Yet there is also an emptiness that leaves teenagers here sullen and depressed.

To experience what life is like in a poor country different from her own not only opens the eyes of girls like Jessica, it gives them a lifelong understanding of what philanthropy can do, which is worth much more than a $1,500 plane ticket. It creates a citizen who understands and appreciates her country all the more and its potential in the world. Seeing the fruits of her labor taking shape in the form of happier, smarter students trains a future social entrepreneur.

As Jessica said, the project has benefited her and her classmates as much as it has the girls overseas.

"A really nice thing happens when we tell people what we're doing," she said. "They say 'I never knew we could do something like that.' They jump in."

As for Rwanda itself, the country has made incredible strides in recent years, but with a war on its border and the global economic downturn reducing investment, its progress is fragile.