Her search for justice has taken her around the world

Ngoc-Tran Vu's thirst for knowledge about racism and injustice has taken her to Cuba, an American Indian reservation in Montana, and along the trail of the Freedom Riders in the South.

At home in South Boston, Vu , who is graduating from the Winsor School, has put her interests to work for local causes, both at school and in the city.

Vu, 18, came to the United States from Vietnam with her family when she was 4. Her experiences growing up as an immigrant swayed her to become involved in social justice causes, Vu said, and those efforts helped shape the person she is now.

``I'm trying to push for a better community and a better world," said Vu, who draws inspiration from her family and civil rights leaders. ``There's a system of oppression that keeps a lot of people down, and I'm just trying to better that."

Last summer Vu took a bus to the South with a small Boston group to retrace the route of the Freedom Riders and interview participants in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Last spring she went with the same group to explore the political and economic landscape in Cuba.

Vu has crammed her summers and school breaks with unusual service and educational opportunities, many of which she found on her own.

She worked at a Harvard School of Public Health cancer research center, studied painting and architecture at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and did community service at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. This summer she will embark on a 43-day trip to Vietnam, where she will work with nongovernmental organizations.

Vu said she's learned more about her own community through her participation in such organizations as the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth at UMass-Boston, and an internship at the Vietnamese-American Initiative for Development in Dorchester, where she worked on voter registration and cultural events.

At Winsor, a private school in the Fenway, Vu has been an active participant in the Human Relations Forum, helping to plan assemblies that discussed race beyond just black and white, said Byron Parrish, Vu's adviser. He said she has a keen understanding of the complexity of racism as well as a cheerful, nonthreatening way of talking about it that engages others.

``I'm going to be really interested to see what she does," Parrish said about Vu's future. ``Whatever it is, it is going to be something really cool."

Vu began attending Winsor in seventh grade after participating in the Steppingstone Academy, a Boston program that prepares underserved students to gain admission and succeed at college preparatory schools.

In the fall she will head to Brown University in Providence as a Gates Millennium Scholar, a full scholarship funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

``Right now is almost a training period where I'm learning as much as I can," she said. ``What I do afterward is really important."