Jaclyn Murphy, 14, and her dad started the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation to match ill children with sports teams.

Clad in Wildcat purple, you’d think she was another player . Jaclyn Murphy, 14, is too young to be a player. But, she’s definitely part of the women’s lacrosse team at my alma mater, Northwestern University.

After being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, she spoke to the team in Chicago. So moved by her story, they “adopted” her. The relationship was symbiotic. The team gave her hope through her medical treatments and Jaclyn gave the team something to play for. And play, they did. I remember watching Jaclyn rush the field when “her team” won their first national title in 2005. And, the ladies continue to win. Jaclyn has celebrated all five straight national titles with the players.

After seeing how she and the team thrived together, Jaclyn and her dad started The Friends of Jaclyn Foundation. It’s an organization that matches up other kids like Jacyln with sports teams across the country. So far, 100 kids have been matched with 300 teams on a wait list.

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Josh Shipp, 28, dishes out 'advice with attitude' to teens.

Our generation doesn’t have a “Dear Abby,” but we do have a “Hey, Josh.” Josh Shipp offers up “advice with attitude” to Generation Y. He says he reaches the audience too old for “Bob the Builder” and too young for Oprah and Dr. Phil.

In his 28 years, Josh has collected a lot of adventures to draw on for advice. He grew up as a foster kid, dealing with suicidal thoughts, abuse and general teenage angst. He got in trouble in class one day for talking. “When you make your friends laugh they’re listening to you. Now, what will you say to them?” Josh remembers his teacher saying to him. “It really struck a nerve with me,” he says.

Josh reached that captive peer audience with a Web site that generated 100,000 emails in the first year. He has written an advice column in CosmoGirl and slings advice on MTV’s TRL. “I want kids to know that it’s not about your past but it’s about your future. Past challenges don’t matter. Those things are part of your story but not your whole story. Life is about attitude and choices,” Josh says of the underlying message to all of his advice.

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Jordan Coleman, 13, funded the documentary 'Say It Loud' to make a positive impact on his community.

Jordan’s friends want to be the next Michael Jordan or rap star. But Jordan wants young African-American boys like him to focus on going to college first. Jordan, 13, used the money he made from being a voice-over actor on the Nickelodeon show “The Backyardigans” to get that message across through a documentary.

The 48-minute documentary is called “Say it Loud,” featuring Ludacris, Rev. Al Sharpton and Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker. Jordan says, “We wanted kids who are getting good grades, or men who’ve graduated from college to ’say it loud,’” Jordan says about the title of his film. “They need to be proud of what they’ve done and make sure they’re sending that message along with being a good athlete or a musician.”

Jordan is trying to show his peers that school is cool. His favorite interview of the movie was Kobe Bryant. “I never knew that his SAT scores were so high. He had such good scores he could’ve gone to any college he wanted to.”

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Matt Certner, 18, founded the Sports Clinic for Children with Special Needs.

Mikey and Matt were best friends. They vacationed together, they played sports together. But when Mikey was diagnosed with autism, the dynamics changed. “Particularly when he would try to play sports. Either the coaches would be too competitive to let him really participate or the kids would be callus,” Matt Certner says of the impetus for him starting Sports Clinic for Children with Special Needs.

Matt wanted to let kids like Mikey have a chance at an even playing field if they wanted to play sports. Matt started with one clinic in his hometown in New Jersey with volunteers from his high school, but in 2 1/2 years, the non-profit group has expanded to six in the state, helping approximately 100 special needs kids and their families. The kids play soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. Like any other sports clinic, the kids get uniforms and trophies.

Matt, now 18, is going to Duke in the Fall, but plans to continue his work. “People say to me all the time, ‘Matt you got into college already, why are you still doing the clinic?’ I don’t do it for resume status. Ever since I was young I wanted to give back. I love it. I love the kids.”

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Neelanjana Banerjee, 30, is editor of YO! Youth Outlook Media.

I remember sitting in journalism class in college and hearing the professor say, “It’s about giving a voice to the voiceless.” I never forgot it, because it seemed to me to be the purest way to describe the power of the press. Neela Banerjee is putting the idea into action as the editor of YO!

YO! stands for Youth Outlook. It’s a magazine that’s part of a non-profit media group in San Francisco. YO! content is generated mostly by young people who are coming out of “the system”- incarceration, foster care, rehabilitation facilities. “They take cameras into their neighborhoods and show us what their life is like. They are able to show some of the complexity of communities around the bay area that often gets lost in main stream media,” Neela says.

Neela compensates all journalists the same, no matter age or socio-economic background. Sometimes, though, she works with youngsters whose literacy is below par to get them to a point where they can effectively communicate their story. “Everyone one can be the media. Everyone is a journalist. We all have access to the tools to tell stories that happen around us and luckily I’m here to distribute it.”

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Jordan Foxworthy, 17, started the Bite Back campaign.

Her dad is the funny man, but Jordan Foxworthy is dealing with some serious issues. Jordan’s trip to Kenya when she was 14 years old inspired her to do what she could as a teen to fight malaria halfway across the world. After a trip to Kibera, Jordan teamed up with Compassion International to develop the Bite Back Campaign, an initiative that raises money and awareness for the disease.

Jordan, now 17, has raised $500,000 for the cause. She’s used Facebook and other social networking tools to challenge teens to donate $10 to purchase a mosquito net. Jordan encourages her peers “bite back” against the bug that kills more African children than HIV/AIDS.

On her famous father, Jeff Foxworthy, Jordan says, “He totally supports me and what I do with bite back but he doesn’t try to take over. He lets it be my thing.”

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Zach Bonner, 11, is walking to the White House to raise awareness of homless children in the U.S.

It all started during Hurricane Charlie. Zach Bonner, then just 6 years old, took his little red wagon door to door in his neighborhood to collect clean water for the victims. After four months, Zach had collected 27 truck loads of supplies.

“Some boys like football or baseball, Zach likes doing charity work,” his mom says. He liked it so much by the time hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, Zach’s family needed to set up a foundation because of the amount of monetary donations he was taking in. They named it Little Red Wagon Foundation, after the moniker he received around town during Charlie.

His latest mission doesn’t include the wagon, just his feet, and a 1,225-mile journey of the “My House to the White House” project. This is the last walk he is doing to raise money and awareness for the 1.3 million homeless kids in the United States. The money is going to setting up apartments for them. “It’s really hard not to help. Once you’ve met them and heard their stories, it’s hard not to want to help,” Zach, now 11, tells us.

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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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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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Winnie Phan, 16, educates kids on the importance of staying in school.

Winnie Phan grew up in a troubled home. Her parents didn’t support her education or give her the opportunities other kids her age enjoyed. By the time she managed to make it through grade school, she was on the road to becoming a statistic.

California has a 25% high school dropout rate, according to the California Board of Education. Nationwide, the dropout rate is about 31%. Winnie, now a junior, is determined to defy the statistic herself and inspire her contemporaries to do the same.

Winnie started Safe Walks in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, pairing up older kids with younger kids to make sure that everyone gets to and from school safely. “Growing up it was scary to walk home,” the now 16-year-old remembers. Taking the fear out of the commute, Winnie hopes, will get more kids staying in school.

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