“Our Christian faith,” says David Montague, director of the Memphis Teacher Residency program, “informs our belief that every child can learn.”

"The houses are not just 'given' to the families," says Dr. Brenda Williams, "They have to work for it. They have to earn it." She and her husband have been using their own money to provide homes to disadvantaged families.

"I feel the young people and children, adolescents, all of them, they all need an opportunity...they need a good education," says Sister Judith Lupo, head of Brazil's largest church-run social services agency.

"This is a new wave of activism through what one eats, that what we eat and what we buy is a vote of confidence in our highest values," says Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz.

“The biggest challenge is the sheer volume of people,” says Tony Hall, former US ambassador to the UN World Food Program. Every day an estimated 1,500 malnourished refugees cross the Kenya border to escape Somalia’s widening famine.

At the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore, executive director Bob Gehman says, "If we were not able to discriminate in our hiring practices based on our faith and religion, that would change us."

“We were building million-dollar vacation town homes, and we were displacing people,” says Nancy Murray, founder and CEO of Builders of Hope, and then “I started getting a conscience.”

Watch excerpts from President Obama’s May 12 speech at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, along with comments on immigration reform by Rev. Luis Cortes Jr. and Bishop Orlando Findlayter.

Millions of women in the developing world suffer from obstetric fistulas and are outcasts in their societies, but a medical missionary from Australia has spent much of her life working to eradicate the condition.

"These schools are the jewels of their neighborhood, and we need to save them," says Susan Work, president of Holy Family Ministries in Chicago.