A Labrador teen is fundraising in her home community of Wabush to help pay for a trip to Africa to help orphans.

Demara Pafford, 17, will be volunteering in April with the group Projects Abroad, and will be assigned to an orphanage in Ethiopia.

Pafford hopes to inspire the children she meets while she is there.

"They don't have any kind of role model, so hopefully if we kind of bring out people that are from Canada and the U.S., they will be able to help them and just inspire them," Pafford said.

She said that she is hoping to give the children she meets their hope for their futures.

"Everything I've ever been given, I'm so grateful for, and I have the best life I could possibly imagine," she said.

"I want to do this for someone else. Someway, somehow, just to make a little spark in someone's life."

A special part of the trip for Pafford will be meeting young girls who do not share the same freedoms she does at home.

"Canada does have respect for women … out there it's a different story. So, maybe if they see a young girl come out and just be so happy and giving them what they need, hopefully that will make them more powerful and strong — that's my goal."

The two-week trip will be spent in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.