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.”

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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Chelsey Shannon, 17, writes for the 'Louder Than Words' book series for teens.

Chelsey was 6 years old when her mom died of leukemia. She was 13 when her father was murdered. Desperate, but hard-pressed to find the resources or a way to cope with the death of two parents, she decided to tell her story.

She is an author for the “Louder than Words” memoir series, written by teens and meant for teens. "Writing gives me a really important outlet for my emotions. Especially right after my dad's death. All I did was write. It helped me put out my feelings of extreme sadness and hopelessness and put it into something constructive," Chelsey, now 17, says.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but maybe the pen also helps you deal with the sword’s might. Chelsey hopes it does for her, and that she can help other young people in the process.

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Felice Gorordo, 26, co-founded Roots of Hope to help foster dialogue between Cubans and Americans.

When Felice Gorordo imagines a “perfect Cuba,” he sees young people able to gather in front of their school and discuss issues openly and freely at workshops, parties, discussions, or performances. Felice would love to see a society where young people can reflect on their hopes and fears and ultimately help each other, looking toward the future.

Felice, 26, is one of the founders of Raices de Esperanza or Roots of Hope. It’s a non-partisan organization that encourages dialogue between young Americans and Cubans. If it were up to Felice, students wouldn’t get kicked out of school because they didn’t sign referendums they don’t agree with, a story he’s heard happen in Cuba time and again.

Felice’s group is working different projects that he hopes will help do just that. A notable one is “Cell Phones 4 Cuba.” Raices de Esperanza basically collect cell phones for people on the island because they normally cost $50-$150 and the average monthly salary is $12-$15. Getting access to that financially out-of-reach gadget, Felice believes, will be a big step toward more invaluable communication.

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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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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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Michael Evans, 25, started Full Court Peace in Northern Ireland.

I report almost every day on long-standing conflicts around the world. Sometimes the world’s best treaty negotiators or international players can’t rectify these deep-rooted battles. Michael Evans made it clear he held none of those positions when I met him a few weeks ago, but he said he had a similar goal.

Michael started playing professional basketball in Belfast after being a star player in college. “I took the offer without even thinking about the situation there. I assumed everything was over,” the 25-year-old says of his move to Northern Ireland. Of course, the cultural and religious divide between the Protestants and Catholics was far from over. Most sports were highly segregated, but not basketball because it wasn’t as popular.

Michael started Full Court Peace after coaching kids from both sides of the conflict and surreptitiously bringing them together. “I knew basketball was a neutral sport. I knew if I walked in with a cricket bat, or a football my plan wouldn't work,” Michael says. Indeed it worked, bringing kids together on the court whose families hated each other everywhere else. The group’s mission is now to use team basketball to cultivate and inspire enduring friendships between teenagers from rivaling communities in war-torn regions of the world.

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Luqman 'Luke' Jubair, 22, seen here attending The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in New York.

Luqman “Luke” Jubair is one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. I actually didn’t know what to expect when I first met this 22-year-old Iraqi man. He grew up in a well-off, well-educated Sunni family of doctors in Hit, about three hours outside of Baghdad, only to have his life turned upside down by war. He had always dreamed of being a doctor. At the height of sectarian violence in 2004, he endured daily threats of kidnapping and assassination going to medical school at the College of Medicine at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad, in a predominately Shiite area.

Because of what he went through and the violence he saw around him every day, I thought Luke would be bitter or vengeful, but he is nothing of the sort. In 2005, he became a surgery assistant at a hospital in his hometown. Then, during the height of violence in the Anbar Province, he moved to the Al-Ramadi Hospital where the needs were greater. Even though he was helping his people, he still hid his identity from local gangs and militias in the so-called “Red Zone,” where he lives and works.

He tells me calmly and with a smile in his eye, the next year he teamed up with other young doctors and professionals – Sunni, Shiite and Christian – who were dealing with similar fears and encountering Iraqis with limited basic supplies or services. They started a group called, Iraqis Rebuilding Our Country, or IROC. The group reaches out to locals to help them help themselves primarily with language, health and computer education.  On top of his service work with IROC, he also now works at the Al-Kadhimia hospital in Baghdad, where he says he still fears for his life.

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Garrett Gravesen and Kevin Scott started the Global L.E.A.D. program to help students study abroad.

Let’s be honest, if a college student tells his parents he wants to go travel abroad without much structure, mom and dad might have nightmares of drunken nights and gallivanting down the streets of Europe with their credit card. I came across Garrett Gravesen’s idea to change that at the “Power 30 Under 30” awards in Atlanta earlier this year. He and his business partner, Kevin Scott, are trying to tap into college students' basic desire to go overseas and put something impressive on their resumes while helping those who are less fortunate, with their new initiative, Global L.E.A.D. Program.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to say JFK’s vision of the Peace Corp didn’t go far enough, but these guys truly believe they can bring global youth service into this century. They took 100 days to travel Africa to see how they could impact education there without implementing an actual curriculum that they believe too often encourages students to focus on the grade, tangible success or goal rather than the raw abstraction of giving back.

Global L.E.A.D. has a pilot program in the summer of next year in Cape Town, South Africa. Its methodology stems from a Wikipedia-style learning model. If it works, who knows? Perhaps more students could find that education doesn’t only happen inside the classroom or through an internship.

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Sejal Hathi, 17, founded Girls Helping Girls.

I see it less these days than when I started this series, but the idolization of careless young people continues. When I started featuring the young people who really speak for our generation, I thought of girls like Sejal Hathi, the girls and guys whose names we should know, the stories young people should look up to.

Sejal started Girls Helping Girls when she was 15. The organization aims to empower all girls to transform the world in substantive ways. One of her big initiatives is a program appropriately called Empower-a-Girl, which partners girls in the U.S. with those in developing countries. Another push is the Sisters 4 Peace Network, which provides one-on-one mentoring for aspiring changemakers and those who are actively changing their part of the world.

Girls Helping Girls has engaged 5,000 girls in more than 15 countries in North America, Africa and Asia and has raised more that $30,000 for educational programs. Now 17, Sejal's ultimate goal is to unite young women behind the same universal vision of self-respect and service, rather than the frivolity and superficiality that has for too long been the only thing some girls see.

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