The ABC Person of the Week featured last night on World News and now on the ABC News website are two kids who used their generation’s medium to powerful and good purpose. ABC explains:

While some teens might use the Internet to catch up with their friends, Nick Anderson and Ana Slavin took a look at social networking Web sites and realized they were teeming with potenital young donors for a charitable cause.

The Massachusetts teens decided to raise funds for the plight in Darfur and challenged other teens across the country to pitch in through Facebook and MySpace. . . .

When they launched Dollars for Darfur, Slavin and Anderson set a goal to raise $200,000 during this past school year. By April they’d beat that number and have now raised $310,000 in contributions.

Anderson knew if he wanted to reach teens, he would have to go online.

“It’s a challenge that tries to harness the voice of teenagers around the country on the issue of the genocide in Darfur and get them involved by using social networks Facebook and MySpace,” Anderson said.

“We started out very simply by inviting our friends to join our Facebook and MySpace pages,” Slavin said.

Then through Web word of mouth they galvanized 2,500 high schools to get involved.

“We received everything from loose change to hundreds of dollars from students,” Slavin said.

That loose change added up, and now half of the $300,000 will be used to fund advocacy efforts to end the genocide in Darfur. The remaining $150,000 will go directly to humanitarian aid for Darfuri refugees, a cause Anderson feels is in grave need of attention.

“I think it is absolutely unbelievable, especially after the horrors of World War II, and we said ‘never again’ to not step forward and put an end to such an atrocity sooner,” he said.