Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha takes care of some of the poorest kids in the city at a state-funded medical center.

When she began to suspect something had gone terribly wrong with the public water supply, she was on it—as a physician and as a parent, she knows how dangerous contaminated water can be. She was stone-walled by officials when she sought research data on the water, then given falsified numbers. But she found private research that showed a startling and dangerous upswing in lead in the city's water. Lead can permanently damage human brains and bodies, especially children's.

Dr. Hanna-Attisha was relentless in pursuing the truth and in going public when she was ignored and insulted by those in charge of Flint's public health and safety. There were accusations against her personally and the possibility that her challenge could endanger the medical center's funding. She was shaken but went right on.

Thanks to her courage, now the world knows what was done, and the people of Flint are on the nation's agenda–a lot of serious damage to people and to the infrastructure must be repaired. First step: the city's water is once more coming from Lake Huron as it was before the "cost-saving" switch to piping it in from the polluted Flint River.

If you could do just about anything you wanted to do, would you choose to assist the people of Haiti in achieving their dreams? That's what John Engle decided to do in 1991, and he's been on the job ever since.

It hasn't been easy. There's been a military coup, a dictatorship, public corruption, random violence, an earthquake, epidemics, the day-to-day strain of living in an impoverished and dangerous place.

"The legacy of violence, brutal exploitation, slavery, colonialism and the hatred that it all breeds, coats the fabric of this society," Engle has said. "I know it. I live it. This is a place where giving one person a job and not another can lead to death."

But in and out of Haiti, Engle is on the case. He's started service non-profits there and introduced democratic community processes, all with the goal of assisting Haitians in doing what they want to do: build and run good schools, stop inhumane actions in prisons and violence against women and girls, end child slavery, construct safer buildings, and make society fair and efficient for all.

He's a voice for Haiti in the halls of power, championing the nation to the World Bank, USAID, and to the world-wide public. And he wants you to know that it's not some joyless struggle. He describes himself as blessed by the people of Haiti, by their courage, humor, and their drive to make life better despite all odds.

When she was fresh out of law school, Canadian Alayne Fleischmann got a really prestigious job, one that looked like the first step in a successful career. She was hired by a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national bank to analyze acquisitions and make sure they were high-quality.

Doing her job, she began to see deals coming in that were anything but high-quality. Mortgages sold to unqualified buyers were being bought up and re-sold to the bank's customers as good investments. Fleischmann analyzed the deals as low-quality, high-risk and was told to never report such a thing via email or on paper. She was alarmed; her boss wanted no records.

The young attorney kept doing her job, finding more and more dubious deals being made and saying so, with increasing concern. She was fired.

When the exact kind of deals she had challenged tanked the US economy and became the subject of a federal investigation, Fleischmann was not a witness; she had signed a confidentiality agreement when she was fired. But watching, month after month, as not one of the bank executives who had led this enormous theft from customers and investors was arrested, she broke the gag agreement she had signed.

This is Sister Megan Rice, a nun for most of her 80+ years and a peace activist since the 1980s. She had been arrested more than three dozen times and had done time twice when she and two other peace activists performed what was called the most serious security breach in the history of US nuclear facilities. They cut through fencing at the "most secure" of all US nuclear weapons plants, walked over to its Highly Enriched Materials building, then hung anti-war banners and painted quotes from the Bible on its walls. They sat down, sang hymns, and waited two full hours before Security guards figured out something was amiss. Convicted of "sabotage," Sister Megan won't be out of prison until she's 87. But she certainly proved that the facility's daunted impregnability is a lie. If a "little old lady" can get in that easily... Point taken, Sister.

This is Hanna Hopko. She braved snipers' bullets in Kiev during a citizens' uprising that brought down a corrupt government there. Now she's leading a rapidly growing citizens' movement that's doing more than rising up and demanding change--they're writing new legislation that makes government open, just and democratic, then pressing legislators to pass these new laws. Her car's been destroyed and her life threatened but Hopko has led her group to the passing of ten of the laws they've drafted. She's pushing now for even more. We're betting she'll do it.

Marc Edwards teaches civil engineering at Virginia Tech; his particular expertise is in municipal water systems. When he was hired to check out Washington DC's water-delivery system, he and his students got right on it. What they found was dangerously high lead levels in the water; what they got for their report was an order to stop working and a cutoff of all funds from the Water and Sewer Authority (WASA), and from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). When Edwards protested that Washington residents were in danger, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a public announcement that the water wasn't harmful.

Funded or not, Edwards was unwilling to let the matter drop. He spent thousands of dollars of his own money to keep the research going, and to pay Freedom of Information fees to get data about the water and its effects. His stress levels put him in a hospital.

Then a stroke of luck: he won a half-million-dollar MacArthur Genius Award and plowed the money into research that proved DC children's blood carried dangerous levels of lead. He published his findings, causing a media and political uproar, and back-pedalling by the CDC and the EPA. The former national director of groundwater and drinking water for the EPA said that “had Edwards not gotten involved, this would never have come out.”

Andy Hall, a Brit, works for Finnwatch, a world-wide nonprofit that spots human abuses around the world and works to stop them. When Hall called out Thailand's National Fruit Company for the way it treats its workers, he asked to work with them on improving their operations. The company needed to stop using child labor, taking away foreign workers' passports, and ignoring Thai laws that give workers paid sick days and leave. The company was not interested. Instead they brought a lawsuit against Hall that's going to court soon. In Bangkok. The company's asking millions in "damages" and seven years in prison for each of six "offenses" Hall is charged with. His attorneys are working hard to keep him from being held in this Thai prison for decades.

You get on a plane, settle in for a long trip, and assume that one of your fellow passengers is an on-duty, well-trained TSA air marshal who would know what to do if somebody tried to high-jack the plane.

Robert MacLean was one of those marshals and he took his job so seriously he challenged his bosses on some moves they made that endangered your safety.

First time, it was when the TSA told its air marshals that they would no longer be assigned to any long flights because the Agency wasn't going to pay for them to sleep in hotels at the ends of such journeys. Budget cuts, you know.

Neither the TSA nor Homeland Security listened when MacLean said that was crazy, especially because Al Qaeda had just issued new threats to high-jack planes. So he quietly leaked the directive to the press. The resulting public uproar made the TSA rescind the order and put marshals back on those flights.

Then, some brilliant soul issued a dress code for all marshals. MacLean figured they'd possibly be the only guys on the planes wearing suits and ties; he told his bosses this would help high-jackers identify marshals, which is not a good idea. Again, the brass didn't listen.

This is Catherine Hamlin MD, who left her home in Australia in 1959 to provide gynecological care to poor women in Ethiopia. At 90, she's still doing that, focusing on one of the most distressing medical/social issues imaginable: obstetric fistulas.

This is an injury that women can suffer if they have no medical assistance at a difficult childbirth. If you don't know about it, that's because it probably doesn't happen where you live. But it happens a lot in Ethiopia, leaving women incontinent and leading to their ostracism from their families and villages.

Hamlin runs the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where surgeons repair the injuries, midwives are trained in preventing them, and patients are given job training.

Addis Ababa is a place where there's been considerable violence in the half century Hamlin's been working there. Through every incident, she's been at the hospital, staying with her patients and their caregivers, despite the dangers.

Thanks to Catherine Hamlin's dedication, over 35,000 women have gotten their lives back. So far.

When Muriel Johnston retired from her job as an office manager, she applied for a Peace Corps posting. Other retirees apply, but Johnston was 84 at the time. She was accepted into the Corps and headed off to Morocco, working for two years as a health and hygiene educator in a remote and primitive rural village. Known there as "the toothbrush lady," she also taught English, and created a school library. One of her astonished sons said, "Her early life gave little hint of her more adventurous old age." Five of her six children approved when she told them she was heading to her overseas post; the youngest one asked why she couldn't just be normal. Johnston smiled and headed for the plane.

Ron Finley is a fashion designer who lives in a part of Los Angeles described as a "food desert" for want of access to fresh produce. Finley eyed the barren traffic median in front of his house and what he saw was 10 by 150 feet of potential vegetable garden. He started digging, planting and harvesting. But what the city saw was illegal use of public property, never mind the public value of all the fresh produce Finley was giving away. When he was fined and ordered to undo his work, Finley called the press. Good sense prevailed and Finley's now got people doing "dig-ins" all over the city, even in other traffic medians. Let the good food grow!

Kit Foshee is the reason you know about "pink slime," the ammonia-filled gunk that some meat processors have been adding to ground meats. Foshee had a six-figure job as a quality control inspector at a meat processing company that was telling its customers that the ammoniated slime made their ground meat safer to eat. Foshee's research, and that of a lot of other scientists, said that was far from true. When he called his company on it, he was told to sit down and shut up. He didn't. The company canned him, his wife left and he's been sued for supposedly defaming the company. A mess. But his take on it is: "I thought it was the right thing to do and that the public had a right to know.”

Paul Holton has served in Iraq again and again. First as a U.S. Army interrogator in the 1990s, then his Utah National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq in 2003. Now he goes back time after time, on his own, as a bearer of gifts--school supplies, toys, clothes, whatever he learns that Iraqi families need. It all started with this one soldier giving a ragged, weeping little girl a stuffed monkey. She was joyful and Holton was hooked. Today his Operation Give moves needed supplies to families far and wide, "to bring hope and solutions to the deprived and disconnected people of the world, in many cases where the U.S. military operates.”

Isabelle and Katherine Adams are working in the playtime of others their ages--Isabelle is 9, Katherine is 6 (making her the youngest Giraffe ever). They're making and selling origami to pay for clean water wells around the world. These two tiny people have raised over $100,000 for that vital cause. They're now working on a kit for other kids who want to follow their lead. Read all about them at www.paperforwater.org.

And now the oldest Giraffe commendee ever, Nicholas Winton. In 1939, the then young Brit identified Jewish kids in Czechoslovakia who were in danger of going to death camps. He forged documents, raised money, recruited British families to take the kids in, and got 669 of them on boats to England. Winton never said a word, not even to his wife, who decades later discovered his notebooks about the rescue. Below, you can see him on his much honored 100th birthday. He's now 103. And he's Sir Nicholas, honored by his nation, his queen and the hundreds of people who now know who to thank that they're alive.

Farai Maguwu is telling the world that the miners in the diamond fields of Zimbabwe are being abused. He's also demanding loudly that the profits from the mines be used to benefit the people of that nation rather than disappearing into unseen hands. He's been imprisoned and he's watched constantly, but his Centre for Natural Resource Governance goes on monitoring the mines and sounding alarms. The Centre's website will be online in March. Search for it in your browser so you can keep up with Maguwu's work.

Nancy Rivard gave up a fast-track management job at an airline to sign on as a flight attendant so she could see first-hand what the needs are of people around the world. From her first "mission" of hand-delivering soaps to Bosnian refugees, she's grown an organization, Airline Ambassadors, whose thousands of volunteers have brought stricken people over $50 million worth of aid. Current focus: training airline staff to recognize trafficking on their flights--and intervene.

Mara Leigh Taylor's life is about America's many thousands of prisoners, about seeing that they get a restart on lives that have gone so badly. Volunteer Taylor goes into prisons to coach inmates in wise decision-making, giving them a new sense of themselves and the lives they can lead when they rejoin society. Taylor's inspired hundreds of others to volunteer, following her lead. Her website is www.gettingoutbygoingin.org.

Thirty years ago American film-maker John Dennis Liu went to Beijing to open a news bureau for CBS. He's stayed on, living in a house his father built before emigrating to the US. But Liu is rarely home. Most of the time he's on the road, from North Korea to Mali to Ecuador, making and showing environmental films about the state of the planet. Constantly on the edge, filming in often dangerous situations, often running out of funds, Liu is unstoppable in his devotion to showing us all what needs to be done to restore and protect our habitat. See his latest footage and travels at his Environmental Education Media Project.

Retired coach Duke Oxford and his wife Toni Oxford could be tending to Duke's new work of selling artificial turf or maybe even taking some time to just enjoy themselves. Instead, they've created "Mel's Diner" (the name taken from the old TV series, "Alice.") This diner's now a mobile unit, staffed by lots of volunteers, and providing casseroles, sandwiches, fruit and desserts to the city of Charlotte's neediest. But mostly it's Duke and Toni, working round the clock, paying bills from their own modest resources, enlisting kids to elders in being their hungry neighbors' keepers. Keep up with them, if you can, at the Mel's Diner website.

Seattle college student Dylan Patterson headed to Uganda as a volunteer, hoping to Dylan & passing wildlife help somehow. He met Enoch Magala in Enoch Magala Kampala and the young American's course was set. Magala and a field team of young Ugandans at the Mpolyabigere Foundation are educating, testing and providing care in a countryside beset by AIDS. And also by malaria, poverty, bad roads and sanitation, and by trigger-happy private armies. Magala and all the field workers, including Patterson, brave those dangers to serve rural Ugandan families in their struggle against AIDS. Patterson did indeed get malaria, as have other Mpolyabigere team members. One lost a brother, killed by militiamen. But nothing has stopped these brave young college grads; they're all heading back into the villages of Uganda, being of service to those who need them.

When he finished college, Bunker Roy was positioned to live a life of ease and privilege in urban Indian society. To his family's dismay, he chose instead to go live in an impoverished village "for a while." He's never left. Amazed and impressed by the skills and character of the often illiterate villagers, Roy saw them as invaluable teachers. He founded the Barefoot College to bring together such knowledgable people to share what they know with others. None of the Barefoot College faculty members have degrees of any kind; Roy calls them "barefoot professionals." And the Giraffe Heroes Project has honored them as well as Roy for sticking their necks out to teach others about solar energy, clean water, handicrafts, wasteland restoration and health care. Go to the Barefoot College website and you'll be amazed by what they're accomplishing.

An obstetrician/gynecologist, Hawa Abdi gave up the security of a staff job in a big hospital to open a small clinic for women on her wealthy family's 1,300-acre farm near Mogadishu. When her country fell into chaos, she saw that women needed more than medical care; they and their children needed shelter, food, water, safety and education. The farm now hosts 90,000 displaced Somalis, mostly women and children. Dr. Abdi has defended the farm against armed attempts by Somali militiamen who demanded that she, a mere woman, hand the entire operation over to them. Armed only with her outrage and determination, she not only refused, she demanded a formal apology for the damage the thugs had done. She got it. Lesson: Do not mess with Hawa Abdi. Keep track of what she's doing at http://www.dhaf.org/

American girl Neha Gupta hasn't let some difficult health problems stop her from doing awesome work to help orphans in her parents' native land, India. Click on her name to find out more.

You're a high school senior in Appleton, Wisconsin and you decide to doyour senior thesis on global poverty. You can read some websites, maybe a couple of books, write it up and you're done, right? Not if you're Oliver Zornow. He decided to go see what was behind the stats, in one of the poorest places on earth, Haiti. Encountering there the realities of disease, illiteracy, hunger, kidnappers and bandits, Zornow could have written up his notes back in safe, clean Appleton and moved on. Instead, he started a school in Caneille, north of Port au Prince. Working three jobs and running endless fundraisers all through high school and college, he created and has sustained the school and a meal service for the students. When he graduated from Laurence University last week, he knew that 150 Haitian kids were getting an education too, thanks to a senior thesis that he decided to take live.

Sam Colella was 7 and shy when he decided he had to do something for kids whose lives were disrupted by war. Overcoming his fears,

he raised over 15 thousand dollars

for children in Sudan, Liberia and Iraq

They're so recently chosen by our volunteer jury, we don't have their stories on our new website yet. But the links here will take you to more information about each of them.

Sarah Cambers, Sabrina Coons, Jessica Shelton & Megan Stewart for creating and sustaining the Life in a Jar project

David Corner, for using his pension to run his own international aid agency, the Gathering Project