Damien Declerk, 25, is a mission coordinator with Operation Smile.

“Everything OK, Damien?” I ask him every other time he zips in front of me with a different box of papers, equipment or toys. “Yeah, yeah,” he laughs. “You’re not stressed?” “No way, this is great,” he says with a genuine smile.

Damien is the mission coordinator on the Operation Smile volunteer trip I am on in Alexandria, Egypt. He’s 25 years old. His role puts him in charge of people twice his age. He oversees all the plastic surgeons, pediatricians and nurses who have donated their time and expertise to offer free operations to kids with cleft lips and/or palates, who can’t afford or don’t have access to the procedure otherwise.

Damien is the kind of guy that will make you laugh even in a crowded hospital in the Third World. He’s been on missions from Morocco to Madagascar. “We have so much and they have so little, and still, the people here are some of the kindest, most giving people I’ve ever met. There is no reason for us not to be happy,” Damien says, of course, with another contagious smile.

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Amanda Plachek and Steven Weber produced the documentary 'War at Home.'

We’ve heard a fair share about the problems troops face when they return to civilian life: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sometimes suicide. But, it’s rare for us to actually hear from the troops living - and sometimes suffering - through that. Sometimes, it’s not a news reporter or a government official that will get to the heart of the story. In this case it was actually two students at Norwich University.

Amanda Plachek, 21, and Steven Weber, 22, haven’t been to war yet, but they know what to ask people who have. As students, they devised a set of 30 questions to ask veterans about their experiences back home. They are in the process of putting those interviews into a documentary, “The War at Home.” A goal for the film is to educate people about all aspects of military life. For example, they say, “Some civilians don't understand what questions they should and shouldn't ask when someone comes back from tour. Don't ask someone how many people they've killed. Don't ask ‘were you wounded or blown up?’”

Amanda is going into active combat duty with the U.S. Army as a transportation officer with the 82nd Airborne, 1st Brigade Combat Team. Steven is commissioning in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Both feel honored to be serving and to be able to tell these stories before they do.

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Andrew Robinson wrote and directed 'April Showers.'

It’s been 10 years since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, left 12 students and a teacher dead. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the date. April 20, 1999, is a date no one watching the events unfold will forget. And, as we’ve sadly seen, it wasn’t the last school shooting, with the Virginia Tech shootings and others that followed.

Andrew Robinson wasn’t watching the news from afar like most of us. He was there. Living it. Smelling it. And running from it. Andrew was in the computer lab in the middle of the campus when the shooting started. He ran to physical safety, but the days and years to come proved to be emotionally perilous.

Andrew wasn’t a filmmaker in Los Angeles, California; he was in advertising. But he sat down to write a story based on his experience at Columbine, and the screenplay for "April Showers" was born in three days. That’s when Andrew realized: “Wow, that’s been in the back of my head for all these years.” He says those years brought about side effects rarely seen in the media: guilt, community persecution and the post-traumatic stress disorder. “I’m just trying to share what I’ve learned so no one else has to go through it,” Andrew says of the goal of his anniversary film.

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Quinn Bradlee, 26, started friendsofquinn.com to help families cope with learning disabilities.

You’d think that the only son of superstar journalists Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn would have a silver spoon in his mouth and a gold ticket to Harvard, where three generations of Bradlee men went. But, Quinn Bradlee was born with velo-cardio-facial syndrome, or VCFS, the most common genetic syndrome after Down’s. While his father may have led “A Good Life,” as described his book, Quinn led “A Different Life,” the title of the younger Bradlee’s new book.

Bradlee was born with a hole in his heart that required intense surgery and treatment. He was kicked out of school and told he was “retarded.” But Bradlee wasn’t properly diagnosed with the little-known disorder until he was 14. Throughout his life he struggled with a host of physical ailments and learning disabilities.

Determined to find his own way and make it easy for other young people and their families dealing with learning disabilities to get information, Quinn started FriendsofQuinn.com. “If I can help a few people in life, I think I’ll be happy. I don’t know if I’d be satisfied, because I want to help everyone, but I would be happy,” he says.

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