Many seventh-grade girls are busy keeping up with the latest fashion trends, studying for tests and cheering for their school’s sports teams. However, Baker School student Sarah Gladstone isn’t your average 12-year-old girl.

When she isn’t swimming for hours each day for her swim team, Sarah can be found crafting beaded bracelets to help support girls with obstetric fistulas, a horrifying medical condition with devastating consequences for young women living half a world away.

Sarah’s mother, Tracy Gladstone, said her daughter's somewhat peculiar interest in the condition came from their synagogue, Temple Emeth, which encourages young girls to do volunteer and charitable work as their bat mitzvah approaches.

“Some kids visit the elderly or tutor kids,” Gladstone said. “Sarah decided to do something different.”

With her bat mitzvah coming up this spring, Sarah decided to support an issue she feels strongly about by raising money and awareness, hoping that girls who suffer from obstetric fistulas can get the treatment they need. Sarah said she became interested in the condition after reading the book “Half the Sky” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and then seeing Kristof speak at Babson College.

She became intrigued by fistula, in particular, after learning that it occurs when young women, particularly in poorer parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, are forced to have a baby without help from a birth attendant. In effect, a baby's head is sometimes too large for a young woman's pelvis and can cause some tissue to die, leaving a hole between the vagina and the bladder, the rectum and the bladder, or both.

Even worse, young women with fistulas can be ostracized in their communities because of the debilitating symptoms of the condition, which can include leaking bodily waste.

 “I’ve been interested in women’s issues before, but once I read his book I became more interested,” Sarah said. “This topic really stood out for me because I realized it’s fixable and that more than 90 percent of the time surgery can help treat these girls so they can have babies again.”

Because of Sarah’s belief that “every act makes a difference,” she decided to dub her project “The Starfish Project.” She came across a quote in a book about a young boy who walks a beach and throws one starfish back into the water at a time, knowing he can never save them all.

Sarah shares the boy's optimistic mindset. “I know I’m not making a difference for every single girl who has the condition but at least I know I’m helping out one, two, or three girls,” Sarah said.

To raise awareness and money for the project, Sarah decided to sell handmade beaded bracelets. Sarah and her family purchase the paper beads, made by women in Cambodia, from a fair trade organization. “I thought, what better way to raise money than to help another woman in another country.”

The bracelets are sold for $20 a piece, and each has a special starfish charm along with an explanation of the condition to remind people what they stand for.

While Sarah started this as a small project in her living room, she’s already collected $2,500 in just a few short months. Sarah said everyone has been extremely supportive, from people at her mother’s work to the swim team. 

Their Russett Road home has become a small jewelry-making factory in the meantime. “We have beads all over the living room,” Tracy Gladstone said. “Her brothers and friends have been helping out too… it’s really been a great process.”

In fact, Sarah recently had a few friends over one night to eat pizza, have a good time and, of course, make plenty of bracelets. Sarah even showed her friends parts of a documentary, "A Walk to Beautiful,” highlighting the issue of obstetric fistula.

Sarah’s parents couldn’t be more proud of her, and fully support her project.

“I think it’s really exciting to watch Sarah because not a lot of 12-year-old girls can talk about this kind of issue with as much poise as she talks about it,” Gladstone said. “Many very bright people haven’t heard about it, so it’s neat to have a young girl educate people.”

To make a donation, visit www.fistulafoundation.org. If you write Sarah's name on the on-line donation form, or on the memo line of a check, then your contribution will be added to her project.