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Eighteen-year-old Lauren Tomasik had a vision. This Wheaton Academy senior wanted to see her Christian high school raise $75,000 to build a medical clinic in Zambia to combat HIV/AIDS. And she wanted the money to come from the pockets of her 575 fellow students.

This was no ordinary vision. But lately this had been no ordinary school, considering that in the past three years these students in Chicago's western suburbs raised nearly $250,000 for HIV/AIDS relief in Africa. Most of it came out of their own pockets.

"God has called this school to do this project," said Tomasik, describing a student body whose members encourage each other to forgo movies, Starbucks runs, and even Christmas presents and prom dresses in order to use that money to provide Zambian peers with education and food. "Living in Wheaton, it's so easy to be focused on your own needs and live in the Wheaton bubble," she said of life in her affluent town, well known for its evangelical subculture. "But I have been blessed so that I can bless others."

Few might expect to find simplicity, sacrifice, and compassion among teenagers. "To me, these are difficult things for a Christian suburban teenager to grasp," said Academy chaplain Chip Huber. "We are a blessed people on our campus, no doubt about it. But instead of soaking it up, we're doing something—taking our faith and making it active."

The story that transformed an upper-middle-class high school into a model for sacrificial giving began on a retreat in the Colorado mountains in summer 2002. Student leaders gathered to plan how to guide their campus spiritually that school year. They tossed around familiar ideas—prayer groups and breakfasts. Something was lacking.

"We knew what was expected of us. But we really felt that God wanted us to do something more," said alumna Christy Peed, "something that people would really see God in and know that we couldn't have done it without God."

The group prayed for such an opportunity. In October, they encountered the One Life Revolution project, a World Vision and Youth Specialties initiative to involve students with AIDS relief in Zambia. It felt perfect. The students were dismayed by opinion polls revealing that American evangelicals put a low priority on ministry to people with HIV/AIDS. Peed, whose parents are missionaries, grew up in Zambia and saw firsthand the devastating effects of AIDS on families. Zambia has more than 630,000 children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. About 1.1 million are infected with the virus.

The One Life program offered a catalog showing ways students could assist an African village by raising money. Opportunities ranging from an $8 chicken to a $53,000 schoolhouse were included. Even though the schoolhouse cost $45,000 more than the second-most-expensive item, Academy students were convinced the school should be their goal.

The student leaders presented the Zambia project to their schoolmates in mid-November along with 10 ways individuals could contribute through personal sacrifice. "We didn't want this project to be something where people's parents wrote checks," Peed said. "We wanted it to be something where students were sacrificing."

During the initial pitch, the student leaders said if every one of the Academy's students that year gave $100, they would more than reach their goal of paying for the $53,000 schoolhouse. But at first, practically no one was enthusiastic. It seemed unlikely they would raise even $10 from each student, and some were strongly opposed to this big ministry dream. Some students felt this new "God-sized" goal was sudden, unreasonable, and driven by guilt. Others asked why their resources should go to Africa, and especially to fighting a sexually transmitted disease like AIDS. Debates after chapel would often leave Peed in tears.

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August 2005, Vol. 49, No. 8