Sugar Grove teen's advocacy gives her direction

In 2013, Sarah Feltes was like a lot of teenage girls: She LOVED the band One Direction.

Besides listening to the music, watching videos and trying to get her mother to take her to concerts, Sarah, now 15, followed the band on Twitter.

One of the band's posts especially caught her attention: If she would sign up to become a Global Citizen at GlobalCitizen.org/tickets, she could win tickets to see the band, and other artists. She would earn points by reading articles and watching videos about issues such as poverty, education, women and children's health, clean water and sanitation. She would also earn points by sending emails, via the website, to elected officials.

But it has turned in to so much more for her.

Sarah is going to be featured in a video to be shown at Global Citizen Festival Sept. 27 in Central Park in New York City. And she and her mother, Denise, are being flown out for the show, which will feature performances by Jay-Z, Carrie Underwood, The Roots and No Doubt.

“This is such an amazing thing,” Sarah said.

And for her, it isn't about the tickets any more.

Encouraging action

Globalcitizen.org is a subsidiary of the Global Poverty Project. The New York-based organization's purpose, according to its U.S. tax returns, is “to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action to end extreme poverty. We do this through campaigns and events to mobilize audiences to take action to create change.”

A female companion to Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone gave $2.2 million to the effort in 2012 and 2013. Major sponsors of the festival include MSNBC, NBC, Caterpillar, iHeart Radio, Citibank and the World Childhood Foundation.

The group does not give money to causes; it educates people about issues.

One of the articles Sarah read on globalcitizen.org was about hunger in children. It said one in six children does not have enough to eat every day.

“It was like really personal to me,” Sarah said.

That's because when she was in fourth grade, her family had to use a charity food pantry. Her mother, the main breadwinner in the household, had lost her job. Sarah recalled being embarrassed about this and wondering what her friends would think of her if they knew. She believed people in the suburbs didn't know that their next-door neighbors could be in such need.

“It was like feelings I did not want to tell other people,” she said.

But those feelings slowly faded away as she began helping out at the Between Friends Food Pantry in Sugar Grove. During the school year, Sarah spends several hours there on Thursday evening. She spends more time there during the summer.

Sarah told Global Citizen organizers about her work while attending a Global Citizen Night concert in April in Chicago. They asked her to write about it for the organization's blog.

“It's from my heart,” she said of the post.

“It got a lot of attention,” Sarah said, especially when the group's CEO posted it to his Facebook page.

She did not tell her parents what she had done.

So when television journalist Soledad O'Brien called the house a few weeks ago, mom Denise almost didn't answer, not recognizing the area code or phone number. O'Brien owns the Starfish Media Group, which is producing the video.

Last week, a crew interviewed Sarah, her friends and her family, at her home, the food pantry and at Sarah's school, Aurora Central Catholic High School.

She now sees fighting global poverty as her calling.

“I hope my story inspires people my age” to get involved, she said.