Pictures: KEN ROBERTSON
One Girl's Chantelle Baxter.
One of the first signs that a heart of gold beat beneath Chantelle Baxter's breathtakingly expensive designer duds came one Sunday morning as she lay in bed - hungover, naturally - surfing Youtube.
She chanced on a clip about the plight of women in a place called Darfur, in a country called Sudan.
Born into a wealthy family, she had known for a while that her money and her wardrobe weren't making her happy. Even the apartment she had bought at age 21 - when she planned to become a property mogul - had lost some of its lustre.
She couldn't visit Darfur, a war zone, but three months later she was on a plane to Sierra Leone on a volunteer mission, and so began her transformation from privileged Melbourne 20-something to world-changer.
Ms Baxter, co-founder of the non-profit organisation One Girl, which gives girls in Sierra Leone access to education, was among speakers at the weekend's Students 4 Students National Leadership Conference at the University of Wollongong.
She told an audience of more than 100 student delegates that they should not be frightened of changing paths as she did, throwing in a successful web design business at the height of the global financial crisis in order to pursue the charity.
One Girl has since put 150 girls in school, established a business selling affordable sanitary pads in rural areas and built a toilet in a school where two boys recently died from snake bites inflicted while they relieved themselves in the bushes.
One Girl's October campaign Do it in a Dress encourages fund-raisers to wear a school dress for a month to raise money to further the charity's work.
"It can be really challenging when you're so far away from the issues like this, to connect with them," Ms Baxter, 27, said.
"I hope [conference delegates] can see that it doesn't take much to make a difference ..."
Other speakers at the two-day conference included NSW Youth Volunteer of the Year, Loki Ball, and Salvation Army Legal Centre founder Luke Geary.
Students 4 Students new speakers director Sam Rathbone, a medical science major at the University of Wollongong, said the conference aimed to inspire and empower future leaders and show them the possibilities involved in volunteering.
"I think a lot of young people see volunteering as handing out soup or just doing their bit and going home," he said. "Younger people like to feel engaged. I think the whole concept of volunteering needs to be reviewed."
The conference raised money for the NSW Men's Shed, and culminated in a charity gala dinner last night.
