Abby Kerbel remembers the sinking feeling she would get in the pit of her stomach when the police would pull up to her neighbor's house in Rockville, Maryland. The uniformed officer would walk to the door, and Abby would instinctively know that once again a family argument had spiraled out of control and erupted into violence. "It must have been very bad for her," Abby recalls, speaking about the frightened woman next door, whom she knew only casually. "I can't even imagine what it was like. I used to feel really, really sorry for her."

A few years later, while Abby was studying to become a bat mitzvah, a section in her Torah portion (Vayishlah) reawakened those disturbing feelings. The Biblical text describes a violent attack on Dina, Jacob's daughter. Abby knew from her neighbor's experience that the Torah was describing an ugly aspect of human behavior that still exists. "No one should be a victim," Abby says, "but sometimes we can't control that." The one thing we can do, she concludes, her voice rising passionately, "is try to help them."

Inspired by the belief that every person deserves to be treated with dignity, the 12-year-old decided that her bat mitzvah project would help victims of violence. She volunteered to assist the local sheriff's community-wide campaign to collect used cell phones. Old cell phones are perfect for women threatened by violence and for other people in need, such as the elderly, because used phones don't need an active service contract to call 9-1-1 for emergencies.

Abby placed cardboard collection boxes in synagogues, and they were soon overflowing with the cellular hand-me-downs.

"Everybody's always getting new cell phones," she explains, "and they don't know what to do with their old ones. This project gives them something good to do with the phones." In two years, Abby has collected more than 300 cell phones for people at risk.

Though her project has earned her awards and a feature article in The Washington Post, the biggest payoff for Abby is the knowledge that she is now helping other people- while once she could only feel sorry for them.