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Thus far, the Greatest Person of the Day column has featured artists, doctors, musicians, educators, academics, activists, and courageous leaders of organizations from close to home and around the world, but we want to know who we're missing - great stories that haven't been told.

Do you know someone in your community who makes an undeniable difference in the lives of others? Someone who has dedicated their lives to service, working tirelessly for a cause that means something to them?

Perhaps you have a close friend who dedicates his/her life to a unique cause, or a former boss or teacher or professor who inspired you?

We're reaching out, hoping to hear your thoughts and meet new people from all walks of life.

Please send nominations for Greatest Person of the Day, along with a description of the person you're nominating, to [email protected].

The Mississippi Center for Justice was looking for help reaching out to the Vietnamese fishing community after the BP oil spill, so they posted a job opportunity on their website. The job required someone with five years experience and mid-level training, and would be co-financed as an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Fellowship.

Lan Diep, who was literally fresh out of the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific, didn't think he had a shot. "I turned in my resume anyway," he told the Huffington Post. "I knew I didn't have the experience, not even close, but I had the interest and the language skill, and I was willing to relocate."

To Lan's surprise, he got the job. A few months later, he relocated his entire life to Mississippi and found himself immersed in a world he didn't know existed.

"I've been involved with the Vietnamese community everywhere I lived in the past," Lan said, talking about his time growing up in Houston and the bay area. "But I truly had no idea there were so many thousands of Vietnamese fisherman in Alabama or the Gulf states."

After the oil spill destroyed their livelihoods, the Vietnamese fishermen along the Gulf Coast (close to 20,000) found themselves marginalized by government paperwork and duped by attorneys looking to turn a profit. "They'd tell the fishermen to 'sign here for health care, sign here for help, we'll get you money,' but so many of them don't really speak English, and didn't realize they were being tricked into signing legal binding agreements." The attorneys weren't even giving the fishermen their own copies of the agreements they'd signed.

On top of that, the process for getting reimbursed for the money these fishermen lost in 2010 is deeply convoluted. "Nobody with the Gulf claims department understands the fishing season. They don't understand that it's not only an income that fishing provides, it's everything; its their diet, it's their bartering tool. They're refusing to recognize very legitimate claims." Essentially, these fishermen aren't getting the money or the support they need to stay afloat.

But Lan has made an effort to frame himself as an ally. Not only does he assist the fishermen in their written communications with the Gulf claims office, he also writes a monthly newsletter in Vietnamese, alerting communities about new rules and procedures. "I explain the laws, I try to help them understand what makes a good claim," he said.

He also makes the rounds of local restaurants and supermarkets, trying his best to reach out to a community that is, by nature, insular and wary of government services.

The question now is how far into the future the oil spill will impact the Vietnamese communities and the Gulf fishermen at large. Lan worries about the serious quandary these fishermen find themselves in. On one hand, many of them have the grounds to take legal action against BP, but on the other, BP still provides a good chunk of their income, thanks to the settlement. They're hesitant to risk giving up the small paycheck they've been provided since the oil spill.

"Last year these people had to essentially restart their lives after over 30 years in this country, since the fall of Saigon [in 1975]" Lan said. "And now they're losing their boats, they're losing their homes, and they're stuck in this difficult system."

But Lan will continue to do what he can. In fact, his presence has become such a fixture in the Gulf state Vietnamese communities that he's considered a sort of de-facto attorney for more than just oil spill-related ssues. "People are passing my number around, saying 'Just call Lan,' he'll help you out," he said, relaying the memory of past calls he's received about people's personal problems. "Really, I just want to help as much as I can, however I can."

To nominate a Greatest Person Of The Day, email [email protected]

"I just wanted to help out," Olivia Bouler said. "So I came up with this idea."

Olivia, an 11-year-old Long Island native, spent a lot of time near the Gulf growing up, watching birds near her grandparents' home in Alabama. Although both of her parents share an interest in environmental issues -- her dad works as a green architect -- Olivia's fascination with birds stems from within.

"I just always loved watching them," Olivia said. Some of her favorites include the Great Blue Heron and the Red-tailed Hawk. "I also love Blue Jays and Cardinals, the birds I see near my house in Long Island."

Olivia was devastated by the 2010 BP oil spill in the region. The circulating photos of the Brown Pelicans in the region and stories from her grandparents made her feel helpless. "I knew it was nesting season and birds wouldn't leave their chicks no matter what," Olivia said.

Immediately, Olivia wrote a letter to the Audobon society offering her humble services:

Dear Audubon Society:

As you all are aware of, the oil spill in the Gulf is devistating (sic). My mom has already donated a lot of money to help, but I have an idea that may also help. I am a decent drawer, and I was wondering if I could sell some bird paintings and give the profits to your organization.

Olivia decided she would draw 500 birds, and anyone who donated money to the wildlife recovery efforts in the Gulf would get an original drawing. To her amazement, the drawings sold out within three weeks. Soon, she had to switch to prints.

Media outlets began covering Olivia's efforts and more donations started coming in. Soon, Olivia had raised over $150,000 for the recovery effort, contributed to a new wildlife center at Moss Point, and been named 2010's Kid of the Year by the ASPCA.

Now she's written a book, Olivia's Birds, which she hopes inspires other young people to pay a bit more attention to her favorite flying species. It includes Olivia's illustrations, and some bird facts and conservation tips she hopes people will pay attention to.

The book has sent her on a tour across America, and landed her a book signing at Cornell -- the university she hopes to attend one day. "They have an amazing ornithology program," Olivia said. "It's all really exciting."

Next month, on a grant from Disney, Olivia will head to Costa Rica to talk to schoolchildren about birds and, hopefully, see some for herself. Best of all, she's inspiring her little brother, Jackson, who recently won an award of his own from his work with Project Puffin.

"He's obsessed with puffins, and he wears suits to school," Olivia said. "He's a really cool kid."

Ask Technical Sergeant Tom Marcum what injuries he sustained over the course of his seven deployments overseas since he joined the Air Force in 1996, and he'll rattle off a startling list.

"Traumatic brain injury, a blowout fracture of my right eye, reconstruction on my right shoulder, equilibrium disorder, debris in my lungs from explosions, hearing loss, cognitive problems, I have no short-term memory, and PTSD," Tom said, pausing to think of any others he might have left out. "I think that's it."

Tom is an extremely optimistic Georgia native. He and his equally strong-willed wife, April, have found solace and a community through the Wounded Warrior Project - an organization dedicated to providing support to injured servicemembers across the country. Immediately upon Tom's return to the states in 2008, the project helped him ease the difficult transition back into civilian life.

This year, Tom is part of Wounded Warrior's campaign to get the word out about the organization. "A lot of people, when they think of organizations like this, they think they only help the people who are wounded in combat, but that's not the whole gist of it. They help the entire family."

And Tom and April have certainly been through their share of trials--a string of issues resulting from Tom's many injuries over the years, and his consistent, long-term hospital care far from their home in Valdosta, Georgia.

In 2008, for instance, one of their two young sons was diagnosed with secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. "He was acting out at school, refusing to go to sleep because he'd have nightmares about his dad dying in an explosion," April said. "We didn't know what to do." The Project helped set Tom and April's son up with counseling and special care.

Financially, the transition has been difficult. "Tom is TDRL, Temporary Duty Retirement List," April said. "This is a way for the military to say, 'well you're a little bit better, so let's not pay you as much.'"

The military has taken months to reevaluate Tom's condition, and the family no longer gets a housing allowance. April recently had to give up her full-time job teaching at a local pre-school to become Tom's full-time caregiver. She attended a caregivers retreat through The Wounded Warrior Project, where she met other spouses who had to learn, quickly, how to permanently care for their loved one.

Through his work with Wounded Warriors and his time in countless hospitals, Tom has tried to done all he can to lift the spirits of his fellow GIs, many of whom were suicidal.

"I've always tried to have a positive attitude," Tom said. "Because that's the only way that you're going to get through this, giving yourself and other people some hope."

Jeremy Glasstetter was building small airplanes at a private airstrip in Florida when the events of 9/11 forced him out of a job and led him to question the direction of his life.

"The FAA closed down all privately owned airstrips in the United States, and we lost half of our contracts," Jeremy remembers. "I was angry and confused, and wanted to do something."

With three younger brothers to think about, and a future he wanted to reevaluate, Jeremy enlisted in the army, where he served for over nine years -- first in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

During his time in Baghdad, Jeremy, a Flint, Mich. native, began taking online courses with the University of Michigan -- it had always been his dream to attend school there -- working towards obtaining a degree. Jeremy amassed 24 credits while serving overseas.

"I was sitting there taking a psychology test online while our base was being mortared," he said, laughing at the memory. "That's a unique situation not many people get to experience."

While overseas, Jeremy became immersed in the often-turbulent transition from the army into higher education, and grew especially interested the work of the Student Veterans of America (SVA). And when he moved back home to Flint in 2008 to obtain his B.B.A. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Administration from the University of Michigan in Flint, he immediately became aware of the issues facing student vets on campus.

"There were some real inefficiencies regarding student veterans -- financial aid resources, accessibility for disabled veterans, general counseling -- the campus was just not prepared to adequately help returning service members," Jeremy said.

So he started the first Flint chapter of the SVA, and soon rose up within the ranks of the organization, all the while making changes within his own university and hoping to draw national attention to the specific needs of returning student vets.

Jeremy also began orchestrating the creation of a Student Veterans Resource Center; one of the few existing resources of its kind in the nation. "We're fully equipped with our own registrar, administration official, and faculty advisor solely dedicated to student veterans," Jeremy said. "We've also got an orientation dedicated solely to returning service members, as well as disability training for staff."

Today, Jeremy serves as the National President of the SVA, and his goal is to initiate a greater collaboration between the Department of Defense, the Army, and colleges around the country.

"A lot of these colleges don't want to seem like they're being discriminatory against other groups on campus," Jeremy said. "They also don't want to seem partisan, or pro-war. Basically, a lot of them just don't want to focus on student veterans."

But progress is indeed being made. "We've been able to get priority admissions for student veterans at a number of campuses and remove out of state tuition for deployed service members in a number of states," Jeremy said. "And we've been able to implement a lot of transitional services for service members in their communities. These are successes that have been incredible for me."

Learn more at the SVA website.

Moranda Hern was 15 years old when her father, Lietenant Colonel Rick Hern, was deployed to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. In the months that followed, she found herself feeling increasingly more isolated and lonely.

"My friends don't have parents in the military for the most part, so they didn't really understand what I was going through," Moranda said. "I thought I was the only one who was experiencing these feelings."

Moranda had long hoped to follow in her father's military footsteps. At 12, she began attending camps and events with the National Guard and California Army, and during a National Guard Youth Symposium in Missouri in 2007, she met another girl, Kaylei Deakin, with whom she had an immediate connection. "Meeting Kaylei was kind of this 'aha' moment for me. I learned I wasn't the only one going through these things."

She and Kaylei wanted to turn their own feelings of confusion over their fathers' deployment into a movement -- one that brings military children across California together.

"Military kids get each other," Moranda said. "There's a real understanding there."

Together, they attended The Women's Conference in California in 2008, which laid the groundwork for The Sisterhood of the Traveling BDUs -- itself a play on the popular teen novel and Army-slang for battle dress uniforms.

Moranda and Kaylei began organizing their first conference for the organization right away, all the while finishing up high school classes and applying for colleges. "I was still, like, trying to get my driver's license," Moranda remembers.

With help from mentors like Major General Mary Kight of the California National Guard and grants and training, they scheduled speakers, workshops, and a semi-formal "Purple Carpet" event. Soon the girls raised enough money so that all conference participants could attend for free.

It took a lot of work, but seeing these hundreds of girls coming together and supporting each validated Kaylei and Moranda's mission.

"The last night of the conference we had an Open Mic, and every girl stood up and spoke about their own experiences," Moranda said. "They thought their fathers had deployed because they didn't love them; they talked about eating disorders and self-esteem issues. They cried and laughed and all these things. But they left the conference knowing that someone was fighting for them."

Moranda's goal is to expand the program nationwide, aiming for at least three more states to take on Sisterhood conferences in the coming months. But she'll have a lot on her plate, considering she's now a freshman at the Air Force Academy. Kaylei is pursuing a life in the military, as well, currently training with the Marines in Fort Leonard Wood.

"I'm also a diver and we travel around to compete," Moranda adds. "So yeah. I'm really busy."

Support the Sisterhood or learn more by going to their website.

This story is part of Military Families Week, an effort by HuffPost and AOL to put a spotlight on issues affecting America's families who serve. Find more at jobs.aol.com/militaryfamilies and aol.com.

In 1992, Bonnie Carroll's life stopped.

That was the year her husband, Tom, a commanding officer for the Alaska Army National Guard, was killed along with seven other officers in an Army C-12 King Air plane crash.

"I thought I had the training and understanding to handle this, to really step up and help my family and other families affected," Bonnie said. "But it quickly became apparent that this was far beyond what I could cope with myself."

Bonnie did have extensive training in military and government work. She was a reserve officer in the Air National Guard and the Air Force, and served as an Executive Assistant for Cabinet Affairs during Ronald Reagan's presidency, insuring that the president's agenda was implemented and carried out effectively.

But after the death of her husband, Bonnie felt powerless, and her training couldn't help her. "I assumed that a grief-support network would exist for military families, since they'd had so many losses over the course of our nation's history," Bonnie remembered.

Shockingly, however, she found that despite some organizations that assisted military families on financial matters, no real support network existed for families affected by the loss of their loved ones. "I wanted to create a peer-based emotional support network for people affected by this unique situation," Bonnie said.

So she conducted extensive research for over two years, attempting to fill the gaps between the services already provided and the care that was needed to deal with this kind of grief. She found long-lasting allies in government, including Senator Ted Stevens, who was instrumental early on. Finally, in 1994, she launched the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS).

Today, TAPS provides comfort and care to military families through four avenues: emotional support, case work assistance, crisis intervention, and a 24-hour helpline. Between 60 and 80 people contact the helpline each day, and all 42 members of the TAPS staff are either military survivors or family members of fallen soldiers.

TAPS staff member, Ami Neiberger-Miller, remembers when she first found TAPS. After her brother was killed in Baghdad, she felt overwhelmed and called TAPS for help. "They put me in touch with another sister who'd lost her brother. It turned out her brother was also buried Section 60 at Arlington -- the same place my brother was buried."

A few years later, Ami called Bonnie and offered some part-time help before their Memorial Day events. Bonnie offered Ami a better proposition-- full-time job in the Public Affairs department of TAPS. "She brought me into her office, gave me a hug and said, 'we're here for you, we're so sorry about what happened with your brother and we're so touched you wanted to help us.'"

The organization runs countless events each year all over the United States, including the Good Grief Camps, which provide an opportunity for children who've lost their parents to come together and meet kids their own age. They're also connected with mentors in the armed forces who provide them with coping skills and support.

On April 5, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined TAPS at their Honor Guard Gala.

"We need to keep pushing the envelope of support for the families of the fallen in ways that we often times haven't thought about," he said at the event.

Bonnie works to further that goal each day.

This story is part of Military Families Week, an effort by HuffPost and AOL to put a spotlight on issues affecting America's families who serve. Find more at jobs.aol.com/militaryfamilies and aol.com.

To nominate a Greatest Person of the Day, e-mail [email protected]

Michele Miller, principal at Jackson Elementary School in Sacramento's Rescue Union school district, is selling all of her shoes.

"I need someone to adopt these things," she says. "Honestly, I'm getting a little desperate."

For 15 years Michele's shoes have had their very own bedroom in her Sacramento home. And she's selling all of them to raise money for her embattled school district, which has recently been threatened with budget cuts in the range of $1.4 to 2.2 million.

"These cuts would eliminate all librarians, bus drivers, health aides, support secretaries in specialized departments, two vice principals, and about 17 teachers overall," Michele says. "After spending about $3000 a year updating the school library the whole thing would sit dark."

The idea to sell her shoes came in an act of late night desperation. "It was about 11 o'clock and I was driving home from this board meeting wondering what I could do to bring in money in a short amount of time," she says. "So I came up with this idea."

With the help of another parent at her school, Michele created Shoes to the Rescue, a website she hopes will drum up attention her cause. The site features 350 pairs of shoes, all within the size 6 ½ - 7 ½ range. Some are classy, some are... fun. But all of them have a story.

"I've been collecting these shoes for about 15 years and they're really a major part of my life," she says.

While these aren't "high-end" shoes by any means -- Michele lives a simple life with her husband and two children, both of whom attended Rescue Union schools growing up -- each buyer will receive a hand-written "adoption certificate" explaining the story behind the pair.

"One of my favorite pairs of sandals has holograms of fish in the coral reef," Michele explains. "I bought them for a trip to Australia about eight years ago."

Another pair of boots saved her from serious injury. After a meeting, she'd jumped out of her car to retrieve some papers, not realizing she'd left the car in drive. "The car was moving along at a good gait across the parking lot with my legs dangling outside the car. I was able to stop the car with my hands, and I walked away without a scratch. The boots looked great after a little polish."

If shoes aren't your thing, you can also make a cash donation on the site through Paypal. The money will go directly to the district.

"April 12th is when the pink slips go out, so we've only got a week left," Michele says. "We'll take whatever help we can get."

In a time when school-wide budget cuts are receiving tons of press nationwide, Michele hopes her cause is personal enough to attract some attention from supporters.

"I've been working with kids for 28 years, and I've never seen cuts like this," Michele says. "I'm hoping we can do something about it."

This post is the last of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.

To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail [email protected].

Growing up in Santa Cruz, CA, Kalia Lydgate's family often found themselves in financial straits. "I grew up in a poor neighborhood and things got rough for me. The Redwoods and the ocean--they became a kind of sanctuary."

Kalia's mother, an artist, introduced her to activism early on and she grew fascinated with the intersection of social justice and sustainability. "My mother worked with the Free Tibet movement," says Kalia, 24. "I remember meeting monks who had been tortured in Chinese prisons for decades, exposed to racism."

At the same time, she was also beginning to understand the problems facing our environment. "I wanted to understand how all these different forms of oppression were connected," she says.

While a student at Wesleyan University, Kalia discovered that her professors didn't always understand or support her intersecting interests. But she soon found an ally in Van Jones, the controversial environmental leader and activist.

Kalia made a few spirited comments at an event that Jones was moderating and afterwards, Kalia says, "He pulled me aside and said to me: 'People will say you're crazy and there's no path for the things you want to do, but stick with it."

Jones provided a framework for Kalia to understand the questions she'd had for so many years, and also helped her secure a job as youth coordinator for the Marion Institute in Marion, MA - a non-profit with similar sustainability goals and a mission to impact local economies.

But Kalia knew she needed to lead a grass roots effort if she wanted the idea of green jobs in low-income communities to catch on. "I didn't want this whole thing to be a segregated white industry," she says. "So I set out to do something about that."

At 24 years old, she founded the New Bedford Green Jobs, Green Economy Initiative (GJGEI) and began dedicating her life to creating jobs and inspiring unexpected community leaders. "I had so many allies in New Bedford - activists, hip hop artists, and educators," Kalia explains. "The initiative was this perfect intersection of everything I've been trying to do."

One of the first programs of its kind in the country, Kalia's GJGEI program aims to train those living in marginalized communities--people of color, veterans, those below the poverty line--to promote environmental awareness and prove that sustainability has the power to stimulate the local economy.

How did Kalia allocate the initial funds for her program? She and her collaborators discovered that a portion of her community's electric bill was going into a sustainability fund every month. "This fund has been around for thirty years," Kalia says, "There was quite a bit of money in it, but nobody really knew it existed."

With help from New Bedford's mayor, Scott W. Lang, her collaborator Khepe-ra Maat, and the utility companies themselves, this new initiative has already approached 3,000 households and local businesses about energy assessments and weatherization. The team of men and women leading these assessments are all local members of the New Bedford community.

Assembling and training this local team has been one of her proudest achievements. "This is true collaboration. We hired people who understand the local culture, to engage businesses to drive demand for efficiency," she says. "These people were not environmentalists by any means; they were just interested in the idea. Many of them have no high school diploma, they're low-income single parents, they come from all different backgrounds."

Kalia was recently named a Mayoral Fellow by New Bedford mayor, Scott W. Lang, who complimented her "tremendous energy, ideas, and idealism." The city's plan is to weatherize 5,000 homes and businesses in the city over the next five years.

Generally, Kalia just wants to continue thinking outside the box to increase local jobs and promote environmental awareness. "We have so many environmental and social problems going on right now," she says. "We have to keep asking: How does poverty impact our relationship to the environment? And how do we keep creating jobs in a unique way?"

This post is part of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.

To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail [email protected].

Every weekend Susan Slotnick carries her boombox through the doors of Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate New York and teaches male prisoners to dance. Under the Rehabilitation for the Arts umbrella, she's been volunteering her time here every weekend for the past five years.

"Part of the reason it works so well with men is that they need to express emotion through their bodies rather than through their words," Susan said.

Susan has worked as a teacher since graduating SUNY New Paltz with a degree in arts education in the early 1970s. She began working with touring dance groups and teaching dance classes to children in her neighborhood. This work inspired her to ask where else dance instruction would be most appreciated. In a country with the highest rate of incarceration by hundreds of thousands, prisons immediately came to mind. "It occurred to me that people who could not change their living conditions would benefit emotionally and physically from dancing."

Susan had a lot of success working with male students in the past, so she began cold-calling male correctional facilites in her area, asking if she could come and teach classes. As a woman, this was especially hard. "Obviously, they thought my idea was laughable," she said.

But soon a juvenile correctional facility in Highland, N.Y. allowed her to give it a try. For five years she volunteered at the facility, training them in modern dance and mounting live performances. "Their parents would come and afterwards they'd tell me it was the proudest experience of their lives."

After a administration change at the juvenile facility cut the funding for the program, Susan tried desperately to bring her classes elsewhere. It was then that she was connected with Katherine Vockins, the director of Rehabilitation for the Arts. Vochkins was skeptical, but Slotnick begged her for help getting another class off the ground.

Within the first five minutes of her first class at Woodbourne, Slotnick could tell that she was in this for the long haul. "Many of the men I work with come from countries where dance is a a major part of their culture," Slotnick says. "Dance is in their bodies. Their crimes do not define them."

Through dance these men are able to express themselves in miraculous ways. "It takes a while for them to trust that you're going to stick with them for the duration, but once they know you'll keep coming back each week, a tremendous amount of understanding starts to flow back and forth between us."

The men she works with at Woodbourne come from a variety of backgrounds and have been incarcerated for everything from theft to murder, but attendance at Susan's dance classes has been high from the beginning. "I did this beautiful piece where the prisoners reenacted their street crimes in slow motion," she explains. "If they aren't free, at least they should be able to feel free."

Andre Noel, one of Susan's students, will be released this weekend after serving a 10-year sentence. He has decided that his life's mission is to return to the Caribbean country where he was born and teach dance to at-risk children.

Susan says the program has been the highlight of her career. And since many of the prisoners have said that dropping out of high school was the "deepest regret of their lives," she has recently been on a mission to educate high school students about the joys and power of dance.

"I was a sad and alienated child who consistently failed in school, so in order to cope with my childhood I would dance. I would dance for hours until I felt better. I want to share that joy."

As she travels around the country, she'll bring with her a documentary film that has been made about her work, "A Reflection of Our Lives Through Dance." The film features many of the prisoners' stories and clips from the prisoners' performances.

Best of all: it was edited by one of her former students.

Watch a video interview with Andre Noel, one of Slotnick's students at Woodbourne:

This post is part of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.

To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail [email protected].

Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson met on the set of 1950s sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" and were entertaining U.S. soldiers in Japan in 1959, when a typhoon changed everything.

Stir crazy after being stuck in a hotel room in Tokyo for days, the two ventured out in the storm with just their camel hair coats for protection, and made a startling discovery.

"We found 11 children huddled together to fend off the cold, their knuckles were cracked and bleeding from the cold," said Sara, now 76. "We couldn't understand anything they were saying, but we did understand "no mama-san, no papa-san."

Sara and Yvonne, now 75, snuck all 11 orphaned children back up to their hotel room, bribing the hotel's maids with cashmere sweaters to keep them quiet. The children, they later found out, had been turned out of orphanages because they were half-American.

In an odyssey so dramatic it was turned into a Lifetime movie, the pair found a woman who was already taking care of 10 orphaned children in a small mud hut, and turned it into an orphanage. "We though we'd be mana-sans and take care of those children ourselves," Sara said.

"Overnight, we had another 100 children left on out doorstep, carrying notes that said 'children of mixed blood.'" They ended up building four more orphanages in Japan.

Since they inadvertently started working with children 52 years ago, Sara and Yvonne have helped change the lives of over six million children and have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five years in a row. The pair went on to build orphanages, a hospital and a school in Vietnam, and organized the "Vietnam baby lift" that took children to safety, and adopted homes in the U.S.

Just when they thought their mission was over, Yvonne said, they were asked to tackle child abuse, an issue that was still taboo the 1970s when they started. The pair launched the "Good Touch/Bad Touch" campaign, started the National Child Abuse Hotline so people could call for help, and for the most traumatized children, developed an approach to help pave the way to recovery.

Childhelp had now built three "villages" which host a residential therapy program designed to help children feel safe and loved, Yvonne explained. They have art therapy and animal therapy. There are schools, therapists and a network of foster homes for the kids to move into once they start to recover.

Sara and Yvonne still run the charity as CEO and president, working every single day Sara said. "We work 24 hours a day, I think it keeps us young," she added.

Sara bubbles over when she talks about the children they have watched grow up. One 6-year-old boy was severely abused and stopped talking after seeing a sibling murdered. "They placed him in 22 foster homes, and he wouldn't talk, so the foster parents just wanted to get rid of him," said Sara. Even the speech therapist at the Childhelp village couldn't get him to say a word. Then one of the therapists hit on an idea: giving him a pony to take care of. "His eyes got as big as saucers, and he would get up early to go to the corral," said Sara. "Within a week, the little boy had put his arms around the neck of the pony and said 'I love you,'" she added.

Yvonne said she was touched by a 14-year-old boy they visited in a foster home. He asked to speak to Yvonne and Sara privately. He asked them how they had started Childhelp, and then told them how he and his sister had been abused, and how they had bounced from foster home to foster home until they joined Childhelp. "He said once a month, they had to work with physically challenged children, and one time, the little boy he was working with dropped a pail," Yvonne explained. "He bent down to pick it up, and he said he realized this little boy would always be like this, but he could change his life."

"You don't have to look far to see the difference education makes in peoples lives," said Hodan Guled.

Hodan fled Somalia with her parents as the civil war broke out in 1991, and moved to the U.S. in 1993 to finish high school. She soon realized she had opportunities other refugees didn't, because of her education. "We always had tutors, even in Somalia," said Hodan. "My parents always made sure our English was good enough," as soon as she moved, she was put into advanced placement classes. "This great country has provided me the opportunity to live in peace and reach my full potential," said Hodan, 34.

It's an opportunity she wants to extend to others.

So Hodan started the Somali and American Fund for Education, to make sure children in Somalia have access to education, despite continued instability in the country on the horn of Africa. "A child born on the eve of Somalian civil war is 21 this year, and has known nothing but violence their whole life," said Hodan. "Education is key to breaking the vicious cycle of war and poverty in Somalia."

By the end of this year S.A.F.E. will have helped a total of 3000 children and teenagers get to school, using a unique funding method that connects Somali Americans with communities back home.

When Hodan moved to Minneapolis, Minn., to work for the Minnesota Department of Health after college, she found the largest Somali community in the U.S., even bumping into friends from her middle school. She was shocked to find out how other refugees had suffered. "I couldn't believe what they went through," said Hodan. And without the educational opportunities she had had, some of them continued to struggle. But, said Hodan, whatever their circumstances, everybody sent money back to Somalia. "Everybody I know sends at least $50 a month to someone at home," she said.

Somalia's government has been crippled since the civil war erupted. With no government funding for schools, communities stepped in and pooled their money to run their own schools, bolstered by funds from Somalians living abroad. "The diaspora has a huge role," said Hodan, explaining that Somalians living outside the country send around $2 billion back home every year, a massive chunk of the country's $5.9 billion annual gross domestic product.

As a result, even in some of the poorest villages in Somalia, locals were able to build and staff their own schools, Hodan found, but they were usually very small. "We decided we're going to identify communities where they already believe in education, and have already taken it into their own hands, and help them build up their infrastructure so they can attract more children."

The schools in Somalia raise a third of the funding for the expansion efforts, and S.A.F.E. provides the rest through a combination of fundraisers in the Somali-American community and grants from major donors like the Coca-Cola Foundation. S.A.F.E is run by volunteers, Hodan said, so the people who donate their hard earned money know all of it is going to the schools in Somalia.

The first school S.A.F.E. funded, a boarding school in the north of the country called Abaarso Tech, didn't have any female students because they didn't have a dorm for the girls to stay in, Hodan explained. So last year, S.A.F.E. raised $10,000 to build one. This year, the Somali American Fund for Education is helping five schools expand, and by 2015, she aims to have helped fund 50 schools.

This year, Hodan also plans to finally go back to Somalia for the first time since her family fled the civil war, to visit the schools the Somali and American Fund For Education will help to expand. "It feels amazing," she said. "A lot of that has to do with the fact that we've had a lot of support," Hodan added. It was gratifying to see that everyone, she said, from the Somali community in Minnesota, to people in northern Somalia trying to live their lives despite a crippling civil war, understood the importance of education.

This post is part of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.

To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail [email protected].

Kassidy Brown wants you to believe in Generation Y.

With Journey of Action, Kassidy and her brother Ryan are traveling the globe to capture stories of the 20 and 30-somethings who are dedicated to enacting positive change. Through their cross-country trip from Alaska to Argentina, the two siblings are creating webisodes to highlight the work of their peers, as well as blogging and uploading images on a frequent basis.

"People say our generation is especially socially conscious and aware and I do believe that, but I also realize there's a large percentage of our generation that's apathetic and feels bombarded by all the world's problems and are looking for solutions," said Kassidy. "It's inspiring to see young people who've come out of college and are well educated, who rather than taking a high paying job get involved in a nonprofit, or start a school, and say, 'I care more about the impact I make than the income I receive."

Since their beginning in 2009, Journey of Action has highlighted activists fighting for immigration reform, global education, sustainable living and more.

Kassidy has always known she wants to be a filmmaker, but until a long trip to Europe a few years ago, was unsure of how to make use of her passion. Her brother, also disenchanted with his work, joined with her to combine their love of traveling with a forward-looking social message and the immediacy of the digital video format.

"We took our passion for traveling and created a journey of action," she said. "We started a web series because we're Generation Y and our target audience is Generation Y. We want these videos to be inspiring and entertaining."

Though Kassidy says their choice of subject was "80 percent planned and 20 percent unplanned," she's been struck by just how many people they've discovered in the country doing remarkable things every day.

"It wasn't overwhelming to decide who we were going to cover, it was overwhelming to decide who we weren't going to cover," she said. "The determination and the character that these people have -- to see other people struggling to try to make a difference is really inspiring."

She recalled in particular meeting a music group called Black Fire while in Navajo Nation, who are fighting for indigenous rights.

"They've been activists since they were 5 years old and they've had a lot of setbacks," she said. "Their mountain, their sacred site, was approved to have a ski resort built on it while we wee there. Yet they are optimistic about the future and they are still fighting every single day. Sometimes you can get jaded and think things can never change but you see they've been fighting for way longer than I've even been an activist, and seeing them fight gives me hope."

The next leg of their journey will take them through South America, using crowd fundraising site IndieGoGo to fund Journey of Action.

"We want to give a voice to the new role models of our generations," Kassidy said.

Watch the Journey of Action webisode featuring Black Fire below:

Helen Gray remembers a field of 30,000 mines that ran straight through a village in Mozambique in south east Africa. Some of the homes were on one side, the local school was on the other.

Parents and children had to carefully walk the safe path through, but every so often someone would stumble and fall, losing a leg, or worse.

The dense, deadly minefield was laid around the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam in Mozambique's Tete Province in the 1970s. The Portuguese colonial government was trying keep independence fighters at bay. But over 30 years after that war ended, the mines were still killing and maiming people.

Helen, a program director at the HALO Trust, led the team that went through the minefield, clearing the explosives inch by inch. Last year, the UK's Prince Harry famously visited the village after the field was cleared.

But like many other countries affected by land mines, Mozambique is dotted with dozens of other minefields that have terrified residents for decades, said Helen, 31. "Mothers are always very frightened, they say 'we know it's there, we've told our children not to go there, but you know what little boys are like,'" she added.

And the dangers vary. The teams clearing mines come across everything from antipersonnel mines filled with less than an ounce of explosive powder, to anti-tank mines filled with 15 lbs of explosives. They also find other kinds of wartime trash: mortar bombs, grenades and even rockets. To get rid of the explosive devices they blow them up, eliciting everything from tiny puffs of smoke to mini-mushroom clouds.

In these places, many local residents still vividly recollect the conflict that led to the problem, and even the military positions the minefields were laid around. Tapping this local knowledge, the HALO Trust hires and trains locals to help clear the minefields, which also helps people feel safer about the newly cleared fields, Helen said. "It gives the local population a lot more confidence in the work that they've done," she added. And it means most of the money the HALO Trust spends stays in the affected communities. HALO's biggest donor is currently the U.S. State Department, followed by the governments of the UK and Japan.

Trained as an ecologist, Helen was working in the Peruvian rainforest when she realized she wanted to work directly with people, and and help make a difference that she could see. She started clearing mines in 2004. The HALO Trust, along with other organizations, are working towards helping to make sure Mozambique is landmine free by 2014.

Helen says this is the most exciting thing about her work. Unlike most of the problems affecting former war zones, the problem of land mines can be decisively fixed. "It can be made to go away, it's not an endless issue," said Helen. "It's a problem you can solve."