Lisa Alter, a copyright lawyer, said she started bringing home material about living conditions elsewhere in the world almost as soon as her daughters Jordana and Arielle Alter Confino could read and understand it. Primarily, her focus was on the plight of women and girls subjected to abuses like child marriage, genital mutilation, and sexual trading.

“I didn’t want to make them miserable; I wanted to make them aware, and I hoped it would make them care,” she said. “I didn’t know if they would do anything about it, but I wanted them to learn that they can make a difference.”

They learned, all right. On Nov. 9, at a ceremony at the United Nations, Jordana was honored by World of Children Inc., an international child advocacy organization, for her work on behalf of girls’ education around the world.

Jordana, a 16-year-old junior at Westfield High School, was given the Founders’ Award for establishing Girls Learn International Inc., a nonprofit organization linking middle and high school girls in the United States with girls in impoverished communities abroad. Started three years ago, when she was in eighth grade, it has grown to include almost 1,000 girls in 50 chapters across the country.

Jordana was one of seven honorees, five of them adults. The other young honoree was a 21-year-old from Canada who went undercover to combat prostitution in her birth country of Sri Lanka.

“We were very proud,” said Alter, talking after returning to their home in Westfield from a college-scouting trip to Yale and Brown universities.

Her daughter acknowledged that she was surprised and delighted to receive the award, but went right on to say, “There’s so much more to be done. Two-thirds of the uneducated children in the world are still girls.

“It would be so great if we could get more people involved.”

Led by a junior board, headed by Jordana, and an adult board, headed by Lisa Alter, the members work in partnership with schools in Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. They raise funds for books and equipment, provide curriculum material, learn about the culture and conditions in their partner communities, and communicate with students, working with them to change attitudes. The American girls receive advocacy and leadership training and learn about research and outreach techniques.

Jordana grins when she remembers her mother’s lessons on women’s lives around the world. “From when I was very little, my mother would come home with these horrible stories,” she said.

Together, they realized that the common link was that none of these girls were getting an education. “I was an ambitious little 10-year-old,” Jordana recalled. “I thought it would be easy, that maybe if we could send some girls to school, things would change.”

It took a few years, but she and her sister went into action. Arielle, now 19 and a college freshman, started a club at her school, Newark Academy, aimed at raising awareness and engaging local girls in helping their peers in poorer countries. Jordana, by then an eighth-grader, got together with four friends, Paige Geraghty, Josie Reindhart, Rachel Ganz, and Stephanie Rowe, to do the same thing at her school.

Alter talked to her friends about the girls’ efforts, and they were similarly inspired. They drew in their daughters and plunged into forging contacts and raising funds to support them.

The club at Westfield High is partnered with the Mukhtar Mai High School in Meerwala in Pakistan. It is named after its founder, the now famous woman who went to court to fight the men who raped and beat her, breaking local taboo and launching an effort to counteract the “honor code” that condones such violence. Mai came to the Girls Learn International summit in Minnesota this past April, as did a string of other luminaries, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and feminist writer Gloria Steinem. Mukhtar Mai and Lisa Alter have become friends.

Later this month, Mai will take back to her school a gift from the Westfield girls — a package of 500 pencils and a scrapbook they have assembled of influential women from around the world.

To hear Jordana talk about the excitement of meeting all these other great activists and of her plans to expand her organization, it might seem as if she has time for little else. She groaned at that suggestion: “I do nine hours homework a night — really.” She is in advanced placement classes in all her subjects, except for one in child growth, an elective she chose to take. In college, she plans to study social psychology and international studies.

Her drive, according to her mother and father, Dr. Joel Confino, has nothing to do with them.

Jordana agrees.

“They support me but they don’t push me,” she said. “If I hope to accomplish big things, I have to work for it. And there’s so much to be done.”