DeRay Mckesson is an American civil rights activist. He is a member of the Black Lives Matter Movement, which organizes protests that center on African-American people. Mckesson is known for his activism via social media outlets such as Twitter and Instagram and has been active in the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri and 2015 Baltimore, Maryland protests.

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Jimmie Briggs

As a journalist, Jimmie Briggs witnessed the struggles of child soldiers during wars in Afghanistan, Uganda, Rwanda, Colombia, and Sri Lanka. He documented his findings in Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War in 2005. Briggs co-founded the Man Up Campaign to encourage youth to stop violence against women and girls, and he became the first African American appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador.

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De’Jaun Correia

With his uncle sitting on death row, De’Jaun Correia has been speaking out against the death penalty. Correia is only 16 years old, but he has already spoken to the British Parliament and will be the keynote speaker at the Amnesty International Youth Summit next month, raising awareness of the death penalty and his uncle’s situation. In January, Correia was chosen as one of The Root’s 25 young futurists and innovators.

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Marvelyn Brown

At the age of 19, Marvelyn Brown contracted HIV/AIDS. She remained upbeat while battling her illness, and traveled around the world to share her story. In 2008, she published her autobiography, Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive. Since then, Brown has become the CEO and Independent HIV Consultant for Marvelous Connections and an ambassador for the Greater Than AIDS Campaign.

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Darius Weems

As a teenager with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Darius Weems had never left his hometown of Athens, Ga. With the help of friends and a counselor at Project REACH, a youth and adult-run, multiracial, multi-gender, grassroots, anti-discrimination, youth organizing center, he took a cross-country trip to Los Angeles, hoping that he might get his wheelchair revamped on the MTV show, Pimp My Ride. His trip was documented in the documentary film Darius Goes West, which helped raise awareness of disability rights and the need for wheelchair accessibility across the nation.

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Zim Ugochukwu

Zim Ugochukwu is a senior at University of North Carolina–Greensboro and founded her own organization, Ignite Greensboro, which seeks to engage young people in their communities. Ugochukwu started the organization to open the International Civil Rights Center and Museum to remember the Greensboro sit-ins that were instrumental to the civil rights movement.

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Bryant Terry

Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., Bryant Terry learned to appreciate the cultivation of good food; he soon became an eco-chef and food activist. In 2002, Terry founded b-healthy!, a project encouraging youth to create a more sustainable food system. He “has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections of poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity,” according to his website.