A story out of southeastern Maine proves that charity is so easy a 12-year-old can do it, literally. Molly McCormick, a seventh-grader from Turner, Maine, has raised $8,500 in the last two years for various causes. According to the local paper:

Some of her causes include the chocolate Easter bunnies she sold last spring to raise money for Tripp Middle School in Turner and the Good Shepherd Food-Bank in Auburn. She raised $1,600 selling cases of chocolate bunnies.

This past fall, she raised $3,600 in five days for her school to buy magazines for sick children at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at the Maine Medical Center.

What’s more impressive, she is also raising money to help children in China.

Another cause she’s adopted is Operation Smile, which provides surgeries for children with facial deformities such as cleft lips and palates. Many of those children are in China. Because medical providers donate their service, a surgery for one child costs $240. Molly has raised enough to pay for eight surgeries.

Molly raised money by simply calling local businesses and asking for their help but she also “donates her money from doing chores, baby-sitting and birthdays” to Operation Smile.

Her experience really highlights the simplicity of charity. Molly got the idea for her magazine drive after finding out that the local hospital didn’t have any magazines for children, and the magazines they did have were out of date. Charity is as easy as noticing a part of life, however small, that can be improved, and then setting out to improve it.

None of this might be life-changing on a global scale but can you imagine what this world would look like if every 12-year-old in America raised money to help a cause? What if every 12-year-old in the world did it? And what if the rest of us pitched in a little too?

Making a small impact is better than making no impact at all and kindness begets kindness.

In 2005 and 2007, Molly’s family adopted two children from China. The younger boy, Kai, was born with a cleft lip. This experience imbued Molly with an awareness of what one can do to help others. Awareness of charity is as important as the charitable act itself. If the idea of helping others is nurtured from a young age, then the world will naturally grow to become a more generous and peaceful place.

Making sure that happens is a job for all of us, not just the 12-year-olds.

Photo Courtesy of Sun Journal.