She is young -- just graduated from high school in May -- but she hasn't let that stop her from making a difference in the world.

Since Alisa Seegmiller started the Operation Smile Club at Orem High two years ago, the club has raised $15,000 to help underprivileged children with facial deformities.

That money has made it possible for more than 50 children to get surgeries to correct their deformities.

"There are those who talk about making a difference, and those who do," said Brieann Stewart, Orem High senior class officer, of Seegmiller, speaking at Orem High School's graduation on May 26. "And she has done it. That is why, when I grow up, I want to be just like Alisa Seegmiller."

Operation Smile was started in 1982 by a plastic surgeon and his wife. The organization helps mostly children in Third World countries.

Seegmiller's older twin sisters started a version of the club at Orem High, but the club disappeared when they graduated.

"I got to high school several years later," Seegmiller said. "I decided I wanted to do something and realized that the Operation Smile Club had kind of crumbled and didn't exist anymore."

This past year, the club had 100 members. The students wrote letters asking for donations and set up midnight movies in the name of the cause. They even sold pieces of duct tape for $1 apiece that students could tape their teachers with.

Because the club met before school, being a member took dedication.

"We were not just waking up at 6:30 in the morning to eat doughnuts," Seegmiller said.

In March, Seegmiller received an unexpected invitation from Operation Smile when she was invited to join a team of 50 doctors and nurses on a two-week mission to Morocco.

Only two to four students are invited on missions like this one each year, Seegmiller said.

Upon arrival, Seegmiller learned that Moroccans with deformities endure difficult, even desperate lives.

"They just get shunned from society," she said. "They can't go to school. They have names like 'mistake,' or their parents are so ashamed ... They have no hope. They have no future. It's up to students and teenagers and selfless people to do something about it."

When Alisa's father, Don Seegmiller, found out his daughter was going to Morocco, he said he was a little worried, but proud.

"I couldn't even comprehend how a little girl would want to do something like that," he said. "I knew she was a courageous girl and nothing was going to stop her. So I tried not to even think about it, all the dangers and everything."

In Morocco, Seegmiller said she saw mothers bring in children with cleft lips and cleft palates.

"Just to see the mothers' faces was something you can't even explain," she said. "The language was a barrier because all of them were speaking Arabic or French, but you could still just feel such a connection."

Many traveled long distances, waiting all day in hot weather to receive treatment, Seegmiller said.

The group treated 166 patients during the trip -- but 284 were turned away because there were not enough resources to treat them, she said.

Part of Seegmiller's job on the trip was to give a teddy bear and hygiene kit including toothbrush and soap to those turned away, she said.

"That was really hard to have the moms come beg, just pulling at my sleeve, saying, 'Please help my kid,' " Seegmiller said.

She gave 30 presentations a day on oral health care, burn care and nutrition.

Working with the people of Morocco was life-changing, she said.

"There is no way I could come close to explaining the impact it has had on me," Seegmiller said.

Now that Seegmiller has graduated, she intends to become a registered nurse, hoping eventually to travel regularly on Operation Smile missions to Third World countries.

The Orem High club has just chosen a new president, Katie Thomas, who said she would like to see the club grow even more next year.

"This is something we can do that is easy and it changes the lives of little children," Thomas said.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C1.