Danielle Somerville was in Haiti when she found her passion.

While on a mission trip in the poverty-stricken country, the North Penn High School senior witnessed some of the worst living conditions in the world; run-down shacks dotted the tropical landscape, where families lived in constant worry of where their next meal would come from. Out of such poor conditions, however, came a moment that changed Somerville’s perspective and focused her desire to help those who are less fortunate.

“One day [in Haiti], these little kids came up to us and started holding our hands and walking with us. They didn’t know who we were, they didn’t care that they were leaving their parents. That’s just how they were there; it was just very open,” explains Somerville.

That openness and innocent expression of love turned out to be the impetus for what Somerville hopes will be a lifelong passion for helping those in poor living conditions.

“I’ve always been interested in helping people. From the time I was little, I always said that I wanted to do something that helps people, and I didn’t really know what that looked like. Going to Haiti really confirmed that my area of interest was poverty, and it has become a passion of mine and something that I really care about ending,” she said.

A week-long mission trip turned out to be only the first project to end poverty that Somerville undertook. This past fall, she turned her focus to the local community, completing a science fair project that examined the correlation between income level and academic performance in North Penn School District elementary schools.

“I actually got the idea for the project at one of the School Board committee meetings [Somerville serves as a student representative for the School Board] where they talked about different demographic factors, such as the percentage of low-income students in each of the elementary schools,” she said.

Curious, Somerville decided to take her hypothesis to the NPHS College and Career Planning Center counselor William Travers, who helped her to find the numbers she needed but didn’t have access to as a student. Once she had gathered those numbers, Somerville compared the income level of students at a particular school to that school’s School Performance Profile score, or SPP. The SPP, which is determined by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and takes into account a school’s test proficiency and literacy scores, is widely regarded among those in education as a fairly accurate measure of a school’s quality. Once her information was collected, Somerville got to work finding a correlation between her two sets of data.

“I created a graph to see if I could find any correlation between the two of them, and what I found was that, overall, the schools that had the highest percentage of low-income students were performing academically lower,” she explained. Though her research was small, her results reflect a nationwide trend that affects millions of students.

“It’s just really interesting to me, seeing how people who are raised in different ways cling to different things,” Somerville said. “And it all starts when you’re little.”

Somerville presented her findings a few weeks ago at the Montgomery County Science Research Competition at Ursinus College, where she won first place in her division. From there, she moved on to the next round of the competition at Delaware Valley College, where she placed third. Though her ranking in that round did not allow her to move on, Somerville hopes to expand her research on poverty’s effects on education when she attends college. This fall, she will attend Penn State and major in Education and Public Policy, which she describes as “a major for people who are interested in education but maybe don’t want to become classroom teachers.”

“Poverty and education are the two things that I’m most passionate about making a difference in, and they have a lot to do with each other,” she said.

Before she heads off to college, Somerville will go back to Haiti for another week of helping the nation and its citizens, who are still reeling from the effects of a 2010 earthquake. Though she will be going overseas to aid in rebuilding efforts, Somerville has not lost sight of how ubiquitous poverty is in her own backyard.

“Poverty is a real thing, and it’s not just this little faraway problem in Africa. It affects people here in Lansdale, too.”