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BOUNTIFUL -- Turning 16 typically means parties to attend and presents to be had. But for one Bountiful teenager, her sweet 16 was spent raising money for others.
Alexis Kearsley and her friends spent her birthday on Saturday at the Bountiful Rec Center. They enjoyed the climbing wall, a band and refreshments, but went without the gifts. Instead, she asked that those who cared for her to help her raise $5,000 for Operation Smile, a volunteer organization that pays for and operates on cleft palates.
"I thought that I don't really need presents and there are people that need the surgery for the cleft palate," Kearsley said.
The overwhelming majority of those people are children -- born with a deformity that is easily treatable but for the poorest treatment is out of reach. According to Operation Smile, a child is born with a cleft palate every three minutes throughout the world.
"It would be nice if I could actually go on one of those trips to Africa to help them," Kearsley said.
She is helping children in Africa and all over the world and she didn't step foot on a plane to do it. Her mother says she raised $2,000 in lieu of birthday gifts. Each cleft palate operations costs $240 dollars, meaning she raised enough money for about eight surgeries.
