Sophia Martinez’s parents are honest with her about Venezuela.

She’s heard about the crime, the poverty and corrupt government in the country she’s from and loves.

So, instead of waiting for someone else to help, at 13 years old, the Lakota Middle School eighth-grader decided she could make a difference.

“I feel helpless, and I need to make a difference, just a tiny one,” she said. “I feel like helping them because my family’s over there still, so it would be awesome to help.”

In partnership with family friend Alejandro Rodriguez, a 13-year-old seventh-grader, the two are launching Hope and Health for Venezuela, a medical supplies drive that will take place June 5-9 at their school.

Rodriguez said helping Venezuela is important to him because he saw his grandmother crying after Nicolas Maduro was selected as the country’s president in 2013.

“She’s always talking about how her people are dying, and I felt really bad for her,” he said. “Their president is sort of like a dictator from what I’ve heard.”

According to the Washington Post, Venezuela is on the brink of an economic collapse and fingers are pointed at Maduro’s unpopular socialist government, as well as the fall of oil prices in 2014, as the causes.

Martinez visited Venezuela when she was a child, as did Rodriguez, but has been told the country has gotten worse from friends and family who still live there.

“I’ve been told that you have to wait in a long line, 13 hours, just to get food and one pound of meat for a whole week,” Rodriguez said.

Martinez said long lines are just part of it. Often, there’s a food shortage at the market, or people simply can’t afford to eat. As a result, unrest over the political system has led to protests and violence.

“I feel like, overall, I wanted to do [a food drive] but it’s so hard,” Martinez explained about the challenge of sending food to another country. “But [we chose] medical supplies because there’s so much violence, and when people get hurt, the hospitals are a mess. There’s no supplies for people to actually be able to be cured or safe from infections and diseases.”

Initially, Martinez asked her Spanish teacher Angela Mattson if she could do a presentation on Venezuela.

“I knew a little from news reports I’d heard, but it wasn’t until she talked to the class, I found out exactly how horrific the conditions in Venezuela were,” said Mattson, who has been teaching Spanish at Lakota for 10 years. “For the next few weeks, Sophia kept us updated on the crisis.”

As students in her Spanish classes continued to learn more about Venezuela, Mattson asked Rodriguez to also give a presentation. Martinez’s class then came up with the idea to present the crisis to Lakota’s eighth-grade leadership class in hopes they could have a fund drive to benefit the people of Venezuela, she said.

With the support of Lakota’s Junior Honor Society, Mattson found the organization Ayuda Humanitaria para Venezuela, which finds ways to get medication to different charity organizations within the country.

“The difficulty was that Venezuela’s government is not allowing foreign aid for its citizens,” Mattson said.

Martinez said they’re asking for Ibuprofen, Tylenol, gauze, Band-Aids, clinical masks, eye drops and any other over-the-counter medicines. To pay for shipping and handling, they will raise money during the school’s regular Dollar Denim Days, which allows students to wear jeans instead of their regular school uniforms if they bring a dollar. Those days are scheduled for June 8-9.

Rodriguez, who wants to play professional baseball and serve in the military, said he wondered how a youth his age could make a difference, but also feels empowered by his leadership in organizing the medical supplies drive.

Martinez wants to model and be a motivational speaker who “gives positive messages out to people to change the world and to try to open up the boundaries for people.”

Martinez said her mother is very proud of her because she celebrates her roots, especially because she and Rodriguez are the only two from Venezuela in school, she thinks.

“So, just to be able to show our ethnicities, I feel very proud to show it,” she said.