People & Media...

At first blush, Sarah Michelle Gellar might not seem like a likely activist. After all, she is best known as a men’s magazine cover girl and the ass-kicking Buffy the Vampire Slayer—though to be fair the show was a lot better than its title would suggest and Buffy became a feminist icon.

In fact, maybe the role rubbed off on her: Between projects (she’ll appear in the upcoming Air I Breathe and Possession), Gellar is working as an ambassador for CARE in Latin America.

Instead of driving a stake through the heart of the undead, she’s helping to vanquish poverty by publicizing micro-financing projects and women’s-empowerment programs. And shortly she’ll be off to Africa, where the issues are clean water and safe sex. This is pretty wonky stuff, but Gellar seems determined to make sure it stays that way.

She doesn’t want to be perceived as yet another celebrity holding a shovel or an AIDS baby."The idea of my being an ambassador is to go down there and see the work that they're doing and be able to share it with people here,” Gellar says. “Look, I can only help so much in terms of building a clean well water system. It's also about law makers and bringing it to the attention of the people who decide where the grants are going to go." In other words, chatting up star-struck congressmen, business people, and media folk.

She was even granted an audience with Hillary Clinton, "who was very responsive," Gellar says. As for her own power as a celebrity? "You use it when it's the right place to use it," Gellar says. “It's not a tool for me. It's a tool for other people."