Brooklyn Center teen gets national award

Ashlee Kephart sat on her living room floor surrounded by carefully arranged books, quilts, clothes, shoes, baby hats and sweaters, school supplies and care packages. Teddy bears were piled on a couch behind her, and bracelets and necklaces were strewn across the piano bench.

All these items will be donated or sold to raise money for people in need as part of Kids for a Better World, a nonprofit organization that she started in 2005.

Through her programs, 16-year-old Kephart of Brooklyn Center has helped send 10,000 bags of personal-care products to the homeless, 45,000 shoes to underprivileged families and 8,000 books to children in hospitals and orphanages. Because of this charity work, she is one of five teenagers chosen from among thousands to be honored today by the Caring Institute in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit organization chaired by former Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kan.

"It's such an honor, but the even greater honor is because of this I'll be able to help more people," said Kephart, who has made several TV appearances since announcement of the awards, including one on the "Today" show last Wednesday.

"She's just a grounded person and really has this internal strength about

her," said institute director Rich Brennan, who got his impressions through phone interviews with Kephart. "There's a sense of courage that she has and a sense of maturity you find in adults. She's far beyond her years in understanding compassion."

An early start

Kephart's interest in community service began early. In third grade, she began Nurse Nancy's Wish List, which collects snacks, clothes and supplies for underprivileged grade-school children. When she was 11, she collected donations of CDs, CD players and karaoke machines for the children as part of her organization's first program, Music From the Heart.

She said she was inspired to start Kids for a Better World by watching older Girl Scouts do volunteer programs.

"I wanted to have an impact and help people like they were," she said.

She talked about her good deeds with a reserved composure, keeping her answers brief -- but her proud mom, Sharon Kephart, was quick to call out supplemental details from the next room: "You said, 'Why can't we help? I can help. I can get other people to help. You saw a need and a solution. Did she tell you about her book?"

The self-published book is "A Special Way," about coping with grief. When her mom unknowingly repeated this from the next room, Kephart replied, "Um... I just did that part."

The teen told "Today" that her mother has been instrumental in helping her with her charity. "She was just such great support. She really tried to help me with everything I wanted to do. She was basically the backbone of everything," she said.

International ties

Kids for a Better World receives items and monetary donations from local and national sources. Volunteers help Kephart assemble care packages. She raises money to ship donations by holding garage and craft sales and selling personally made jewelry, bookmarks and scarves. She also works with other nonprofit groups, including S.E.E. Africa International and Baraka, to send donations outside Minnesota, such as to hurricane victims and to Liberia, Kenya and Russia.

Kephart spends about 10 hours a week on her charity, collecting donations, putting together items and answering daily mail, but said she is still a normal teenager: "I'm not superhuman or anything."

She springs to life when the subject turns to movies, gamely reenacting a whole scene from "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- complete with British accents and character alternations.

"She loves to recite movies, and I mean word for word, so you don't even have to see it," said her friend Caitlyn Oswalt, 16. To her friends she's just Ashlee because she likes to keep her accomplishments to herself, Oswalt said.

At Park Center Senior High in Brooklyn Park, where she is a junior, Kephart plays violin in the orchestra and reenacts court cases in an extracurricular activity called Mock Trial. She likes to read, surf the Internet, listen to music and watch the Discovery and History channels on TV.

"She really goes on her own tune," said Adam Tarr, 17, who knows Kephart through church and orchestra. Her charity work is not widely known at school, he said. (That may change following her recent spate of media attention.)

Kephart, who wants to be a psychologist, plans to keep expanding her programs and hopes that every state in the nation, as well as every foreign country, has a chapter of Kids for a Better World someday. Liberia will be the first -- she recently learned it is beginning its own chapter.

As she sat on the floor petting her shih tzu, Angel, Sharon Kephart reflected on her daughter's achievements.

"People have said, 'You can't do that,'" she said. "But Ashlee says, 'Why not? Yes, I can.'"

Then mom and daughter chanted a clearly well-practiced motto in unison: "If something is impossible, it's only because they haven't done it yet."

Hilary Dickinson is a University of Minnesota student working on assignment for the Star Tribune.