Taylor hopes to send 30,000 teddy bears to children in hospitals across the U.S. by September

If you’ve been in the hospital or had a family member or friend there, you know how lonely and scary it can be. Once visiting hours are over, the levity and the hugs stop. But, if it were up to Taylor Crabtree, the hugs would last all night.

When Taylor was 7 years old she started TayBear. Like many little girls, Taylor and her friends made hairclips to sell for extra money. She didn’t just go out and blow the money, though. Instead, she used it to buy teddy bears for kids in the hospital with cancer and chronic blood diseases.

Taylor’s goal was to buy 50 bears for her local hospital. But, she couldn’t resist the letters from kids (and kids at heart) asking her for more bears to hug at night. Now, at 17, Taylor has donated nearly 21,000 teddy bears to Hematology/Oncology departments across the country.

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview

Tara Suri, 16, hopes to help to young children around the world achieve their full potential.

Bake sales and recycling are common fundraising tactics in middle school. But Tara Suri wasn’t baking cupcakes for just any common cause. Her cause was hope, literally.

When Tara was 13, she was more than saddened by her trip to India with her family. From her sadness sprung the idea of trying to help the orphans in India and Sudan whom she saw abandoned by their parents, sometimes found in garbage dumps. Tara started H.O.P.E., or Helping Orphans Pursue Education. It aims to give kids the opportunity to achieve their full potential with the basics, like a sturdy roof over their heads, that Tara and her friends sometimes took for granted back in Scarsdale, New York.

Now, at 16, she has expanded her cause with an umbrella organization called Aandolan, which means “a movement for change” in Hindi. Through that fundraising group, Tara now runs Turn Your World Around and Connect a Kid along with H.O.P.E., and a lot of it for kids growing up continents away who are in sad situations.

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview

The members of S4 hope to educate college students about Social Security.

So maybe it’s not the sexiest issue on the campaign trail. But if it’s up to the founders of Students for Saving Social Security, it will be. The organization, known as S4, sees a chance to make the issue a hot one now.

“Now” is a big thing for the activist group that has a presence on colleges across the country. Its members fear that young people don’t think they have to care about Social Security until it’s too late. According to the Social Security Administration, the system is facing a $13.4 trillion shortfall.

S4 advocates the use of more personal retirement accounts to tighten the gap. It’s a solution conservatives often support. But its members maintain that the group is nonpartisan and that they only want Social Security to have more presence in political dialogue. That way, they hope, when the time comes for them to depend on it, it will be there.

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview

Aaron Sohacki fell in love with planes at an early age.

Like a lot of kids, Aaron Sohacki’s dad took him to watch airplanes take off and land at the airport. Like some kids, his love for watching planes turned into a love of flying, and he got his pilot’s license before his driver’s license. Uniquely, his love for flying turned into a passion for running a business that flies other people.

When Sohacki was 21, he started ImagineAir. It’s a regional company that lets regular folks fly privately. Along the way, he has flown some not-so-regular people like one of his first clients, the former mayor of Augusta, Georgia, who needed to fly to have dinner with Rudy Giuliani.

The charter service takes people 300-500 miles from the headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Considered a new version of a taxi service, the “air taxi” often costs less than commercial travel. Now age 24, the CEO still flies customers and often gets asked, “Are you even old enough to fly this plane?”

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview

29-year-old Genevieve Thiers is the founder of sittercity.com.

Genevieve Thiers was the oldest of seven kids, which meant she started baby-sitting almost as soon as she was born. But all the diapers, Friday nights in and lousy tips eventually paid off with millions.

In college, Thiers saw a pregnant woman posting fliers around campus for a baby-sitter. It was cheaper than going through an agency, which could cost in the thousands of dollars. After meeting her future husband online, Thiers thought that there had to be a better way. So she started sittercity.com, her real-life version of the “Baby-sitters Club” of young adult fiction.

The site launched in 2001 and has grown beyond connecting parents and sitters to bring together people in search of elder care and pet care with the caregivers of their choice. And now, at 29, Thiers gets to go out on Friday nights!

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview