Phoebe Kelleher woke Christmas morning to find sunscreen in her stocking this year. Judging from her light hair, fair complexion and Irish heritage, she needs it — but certainly not against the gray winter skies on the Vineyard.

The sun block, a gift from her mother, was actually for another time and another, much sunnier place. On March 4, 17-year-old Phoebe will leave her Island home for a two-month stint in Africa. “Probably my biggest concern is the sun, because I have the lightest skin in the world,” she said in an interview at the high school Monday. “That’s probably my mom’s biggest concern too, that I’m going to get sun poisoning the first day I’m there.”

She was exaggerating a little. Her mother has certainly had other concerns in sending her daughter to spend two months doing service and environmental work in two third world countries. But it hasn’t stopped her from helping Phoebe plan the trip.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Africa, like one of those things you think of as a kid,” Phoebe said. When she found out at the end of her junior year, that she would have enough credits to graduate from the regional high school a semester early, she set her sights on finding a way to spend her free months traveling. “[I] decided that I didn’t really want to go to Europe. I wanted to go to a place where I could help someone,” she said.

Many of the programs she and her mother researched together turned out to be shams. Then she visited Washington, D.C., and connected with a friend whose husband worked for the State Department; they agreed to help Phoebe in her search. The couple, now living in Tanzania, assured Phoebe, when she came across Camps International, that the program was legitimate. “That made my mom 10 times more comfortable with sending me out to Africa,” she said.

The United Kingdom-based travel program will take Phoebe to Kenya and Tanzania for a month apiece, to do service work and wildlife study. In Kenya, she will work in orphanages, help to build buildings, and do other community-oriented work. In Tanzania, she will work in a wildlife sanctuary and get the chance to climb a portion of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

“I’m nervous to see how it changes me, because everyone says it will give you a whole new perspective,” she said of her trip. “I’m also excited to help.”

That wouldn’t surprise many of her classmates at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, who this year voted Phoebe the person most likely to save the world. She’s already volunteering at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, as part of a high school mentoring program in which she shadows nurses in every different hospital department.

“I’m kind of like an assistant,” said Phoebe. “I wear purple scrubs so they all know I’m from the high school. And I just follow them around and they teach me stuff and ask me questions and I watch them do procedures and surgeries.”

Phoebe has had a full schedule this year. She’s been planning the trip to Africa, applying to colleges, working at the hospital and serving as captain on the girls’ hockey team, all while trying to get her schoolwork in order so she can graduate early. But no matter how full her days, she can’t help but try to lend a hand when help is needed. So this week, as she finished her last day of classes and completed the last of her final exams, she was also busy making last-minute preparations for tonight’s student-organized benefit for Haiti.

“I think it will all go really, really well [tonight], but getting there was definitely stressful,” said Phoebe. She and a handful of her classmates, including her friend Patrick Hart, who had traveled to Haiti as a volunteer before the earthquake hit, worked together to plan the event at the old Game Room in Oak Bluffs. The benefit will include dance and musical performances by high school students, and food prepared by Phoebe’s hockey teammates.

Despite her other obligations, Phoebe didn’t feel as if she could ignore the crisis in Haiti. “I didn’t want anyone to lose interest. If you do [a benefit] a week later, then the Haiti earthquake might not be so much of a big deal to everybody as it is now,” she said. “It was something I felt like I really needed to do.”

In the month between her last day of school and her departure for Africa, Phoebe will try to find part-time work to save money, and try to enlist some sponsors to help her finance her trip. The travel program itself wasn’t too pricey, she said, but the flights were another story. “The flights cost more than spending two months in Africa,” Phoebe said. And while she prepares herself financially, she’ll also have a little downtime to prepare herself mentally.

“I’ve never been to someplace where it’s such a huge culture shock,” said Phoebe. Born and raised on the Vineyard, she’s traveled to places like Ireland, Mexico and Jamaica but has never been away from home for this long. “I can’t even imagine how different it’s going to be.”

Luckily for Phoebe, she will be traveling with a group of native English speakers, because she can barely get through the packet of Swahili, the native language spoken in her destinations in Africa, sent to her by the directors of Camps International. “It’s impossible, I can’t do it at all,” she said, laughing. “It’s a non-Romantic language, so there are literally no words that relate at all to the English language, or Spanish, which I know a little.”

Phoebe admitted that she tends to be an indecisive person, especially in her plans for life after Africa. She’ll be getting many of her acceptance notifications from the dozen or so colleges she’s applied to while she’s abroad. “I’m at the point where if I literally got into every school I would probably just not go to college because I wouldn’t have any idea [which to choose],” she joked. Once she gets home in early May, she’ll have only a handful of days to make her final decision. And that she still isn’t sure what she’d like to study — she’s entertained everything from anthropology to writing to medicine — makes her decision that much harder.

Despite her decision to break with the norm and graduate early, Phoebe still feels a close connection with her Vineyard classmates. “I have friends that I will never lose touch with, and I know that,” she said. And she’ll be back in time to walk the stage with them at graduation, and perhaps share a record of her world-saving efforts so many miles away. “I’ve gotten really into photography,” she said. “My parents bought me a camera two Christmases ago, and I carry it everywhere.”

The Haiti Benefit takes place tonight at the former Game Room at 9 Oak Bluffs Lane from 7 to 10 p.m. General admission is $10, family admission is $25. There will also be a raffle. All proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross.