Today's Hero of the week, Kendall Ciesemier is from Wheaton, Illinois.  In 2004, when Kendall was 11 years old, she saw a story on The Oprah Winfrey Show highlighting the plight of AIDS orphans in Africa. Kendall presented all $360 of her life savings to her mother and declared that she wanted to adopt a child in Africa. The money was enough to sponsor an 8-year-old girl from Mauritania, named Banite, to attend school for the first time. And when Kendall received her first letter from Banite, thanking her for changing her life, she knew her work wasn't done.

But Kendall was facing a battle of her own. She was born with a rare liver disease called biliary atresia, and summer she underwent not one but two liver transplants. And instead of gifts, she asked her classmates to help her raise money for orphans overseas. They raised enough to sponsor the entire village of Musele, Zambia. 

Meanwhile, children around the country started their own fundraisers to pull together $15,000 in Kendall's name. By January of 2005, Kendall officially founded Kids Caring 4 Kids as 501(c)(3) charity. 

In the 10 years since Kendall founded Kids Caring 4 Kids, she is now only $50,000 away from reaching her initial fundraising goal of $1 million. She plans to spend her summer raising the rest of it. She's now a fourth-year student at Georgetown University, where she hopes to become a journalist who travels the world bringing attention to children's issues. Her organization provides healthcare, housing, and education to children and orphans who are at risk of falling into prostitution or slavery or crime, and you can read the specifics about how she does it through various projects at Kids Caring 4 Kids.