Scholarship winner Makwei Mabioor Deng, 23, plans to return to his Sudanese homeland to practice law.

Two years ago, Makwei Mabioor Deng had never seen a computer or a library full of books. For 16 years he lived in a Sudanese refugee camp after his village was destroyed. But, today he has access to those things and more educational resources he could imagine as a student at George Washington University.

Student activists on campus wanted to help young people from the war-torn region by setting up a scholarship. Makwei was a awarded a scholarship worth more than $200,000 to study at GW. But, the scholarship has one major condition. Makwei must go back and educate his people or pay the money back.

Makwei, 23, plans to fulfill that obligation. He plans on becoming a lawyer and move back to Sudan. “I what to replace battlefield with courtroom, guns and bullets with legal representation, and open confrontation with negotiation around the table.”

Morasha Winokur, 11, is the author of 'My Invisible World.'

Morasha’s mother describes her daughter as “an old soul.” She’s 11 years old but has the sharp sense of awareness and honesty of someone many times her age. In her new book, "My Invisible World – Life with a Brother, His Disability and His Service Dog," Morasha discusses a rarely talked about condition, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).

Morasha and her brother Iyal were both adopted from different Russian orphanages when they were babies. When Iyal was 4 years old, he was diagnosed with FAS. The disorder, along with its similar conditions, affects 1 out of 100 infants each year. That's more than autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida and sudden infant death syndrome combined. Growing up with Iyal has been challenging, dealing with his outbursts and behavioral issues. To help make it easier, the family brought home an FAS-trained dog named Chancer, the first-ever in the U.S.

Morasha’s uses her book to blatantly and poignantly express what her life is like having someone with FAS in the family. With her youthful voice, she has raised awareness for FAS and touched other families who are going through the same thing. She writes, “When my mother and I go out shopping, I usually get asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ because people think something is wrong with me. They just can’t get it into their head that it’s okay for people to all be different and some people need to wear glasses, or use a wheelchair for better abilities. I reply, ‘Nothing, the service dog is for my brother, but we just wanted to take him for a walk. My brother is not here right now.’ The person who asks that question responds, ‘Oh,’ or nothing at all and turns away. I get that a lot. It’s really quite annoying.’”

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Brittany Marrill founded the Ugandan American Partnership Organization to help Ugandan families.

At first glance, it’s hard to see how a pretty college student from a good home in Georgia and a poor, young mother in a Ugandan village who took in 24 orphans could be connected. But, while Brittany Merrill was studying abroad in Uganda, Sarah Kamara and her children changed the course of Brittany’s life and career. “They taught me about what is meaningful in this world and gave me purpose,” Brittany said of the encounter. “They shook me out of my complacency.”

Seeing the young mother’s need for food and shelter for the children she took in from the village, Brittany started to raise money for a better home for Kamara when she came back to the States. She found a donor to buy them a house. But, she didn’t stop there. She started the non-profit Ugandan American Partnership to help other Ugandan communities.

Four years and about $800,000 in donations after her first encounter with Kamara, Brittany opened The Ranch on Jesus Orphanage in March of this year. It holds the orphans she sought out to help and more. At capacity, 180 orphans can live there. Brittany now splits her time between Uganda and Atlanta, running her organization full-time.

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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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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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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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Phalyn Perry, 16, encourages young people to make better choices by avoiding gang life.

We see lots of stories about the perpetuation of gang violence from generation to generation. It isn't until a member of a new generation stops and says, "enough" that the cycle stops. That's what 16-year-old Phalyn Perry did.

She grew up in the gang neighborhood of the Raymond Avenue Crips in Los Angeles. Her father was an original member of the Crips, involved in violence and selling drugs. He went to prison when she was 10 years old for a 19-year sentence on robbery. Phalyn visits her father in prison and says he has now changed his ways. She hopes she will be able to deliver his message of non-violence outside the prison bars. She says, "He always tells me, 'Bonehead, you're a very intelligent young girl. Don't chase boys, chase your school work because it will all pay off in the long run.'"

Today, she actually chases motivation. As a member of Common Unity Reaching Everyone, or CURE, and A Better L.A., Phayln uses her story to inspire others to block out the negativity and hang with the right crowd like she did. Through weekly community events, she inspires other young people growing up with temptation to join a gang, to also say, "enough."

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