How does a twenty three old woman who has never been to Africa decide to spend her entire summer internship with a charity in startup mode? Well yes, it might be that I am partly crazy (although I prefer the word adventurous); Or you could call it passion and youthful idealism. It might even be a naïve quest to “save the world”. Honestly, there are probably components of all of it.

My catalyst for working in the developing world really began when I started to see how the rest of the world lives. I had the good fortune to travel throughout Latin America and Asia where I had to reconcile my romantic illusions of these ancient and beautiful cultures with the crushing social problems created by poverty. While I was definitely privileged to have such opportunity, my biggest stroke of luck came in the form of getting hit by a car in Heredia, Costa Rica. Though traumatic this transformative experience showed me the vast disparity of treatment in the social healthcare system. It did not go unnoticed that as an American citizen, I took priority over the poorer natives and Nicaraguans waiting for hours in the hall.

In order to sharpen my skill set to be more affective in the field of social change, I decided to get my Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at the University of Texas. I know I am learning valuable tools but between 400 pages of reading a week, and 30 page papers, not to mention trying to stay above the poverty line, school can be a frustrating experience. Social life is a hodgepodge of other like minded liberal kids at coffee shops discussing international theory, debating foreign policy and regurgitating the morning’s New York Times. After spending our days educating ourselves about atrocities that happen in the world, we ask: what can we do for the starving and oppressed people in Zimbabwe?, how can we support protesting Tibetan monks? We discuss some great ideas, but like me, many of my peers also feel the frustration of talk over action. Acquiring the skills to make substantive change is important, but every year in the books, is a year lost to the actual change we want to see.

Sometimes just a simple article on the BBC can lead you on a journey into the heart of Africa to help desperate and forgotten women. In November of 2007, I read three stories of women in Nigeria who suffered from obstetric fistulas. They were young, alone, completely marginalized by their communities and abandoned by their husbands. They were poor, uneducated and attributed the fistula to a curse. Any woman can imagine the pain of losing a child and any person can envisage the shame and embarrassment of walking down the street or riding the bus unable to control basic bodily functions.

I immediately knew I wanted to do something for these women. But what? With no money and little time, how does one, at this stage in life, get up and do something big? I think the answer is easier than most of us like to think: if you want something to happen, you make it happen.

For me, that first meant learning everything that I could about the condition, where it is prominent, what agencies focus on it, how a surgery is conducted, the profiles of the women, the hospitals and the countries. And then I talked. I had never heard of this condition in America, and if I had not, I assumed a lot of people were equally in the dark. One of the friends I talked to was Seth, who I met through his Summit for Smiles campaign. Seth and I had discussed his imminent career transition into social enterprise but I never suspected that he would leave his private sector career to devote his life to helping millions of ostracized women in the developing world.

But that is exactly what happened. Seth began to think about a new business model for treating OF and my knowledge was at the center of this developing idea. As the concept for OperationOF began to materialize, Seth talked about leaving his job to focus full time and OperationOF began to seep into every aspect of my life - it became my second job (after school). We wrote to surgeons, the UNFPA and nonprofits working in the space and as things progressed, a summer project began to solidify. After the concept phase, Seth envisioned a pilot phase and needed to travel around Africa vetting different potential pilot sites. My ever-growing knowledge of fistula coupled with the need for research and analytical skills made this a fantastic opportunity to gain real hands on experience and active social change with the population I intended to serve.

I lobbied the graduate coordinator to let me make OperationOF my internship and applied for outside funding to help support this unpaid (and underfunded) summer internship. After receiving a grant from the Strauss Center at the LBJ School, our summer project to Africa became a reality for me. So here I am, packing my bags for Nairobi, and getting ready spend two months working tirelessly to help make this charity a reality that can help these women.