Refugee Welcome WagonClementine Mukeshimana Msengi, 34, three childrenBright Move Network, Cedar Falls, IA

When she first came to the United States 11 years ago, Clementine Mukeshimana Msengi was traveling in refugee mode: displaced but determined. She carried only a few reminders of her life in Rwanda, where civil war had erupted, uprooting her family and killing her parents. An older brother who had immigrated earlier arranged for her relocation to Cedar Falls, IA. "I had the culture shock," says Clementine. "I spoke only a little English and had problems socializing. And the snow, it was really depressing."

She was told to find work at the local meatpacking plant and assume a modest immigrant's existence—in other words, settle into an unnoticed life. Instead, Clementine, now married and a mother of three (Hope, 4; Elisante, 3; Peace, 9 months), put herself through college and graduate school, majoring in community health. After bettering her own life, she looked around to see what she could do for others.

Three years ago, she founded Bright Move Network, an innovative education, mentoring and referral service that helps refugees and immigrants adjust to life in the Hawkeye State, which has increasingly become a haven for people from past and present global hot spots such as Bosnia, Haiti and Iraq. "I was a refugee," she explains, "and because of my personal experience I know how hard it is. But I've also had so many good people touch my life." Clementine mentions a woman who hid her in Rwanda and the countless people stateside who reached out to her when she felt sealed off from the language and culture. The only way to repay them, she says, is to help other immigrants feel wanted and welcome. At last count, more than 300 immigrants and their families had passed through the program. "It's very important to integrate newcomers," she says. Ethnic divisions were largely responsible for the Rwandan war. Bright Move Network symbolizes the possibility of community, in this case bridges between the mostly white Christian majority and the myriad of races, ethnicities and religions from other countries. "We have several people in the mentoring program who became friends and welcomed each other into their homes," says Clementine. "This way, slowly, slowly, we grow the message and build two-way understanding and friendship."

So, doggedly and not so quietly, Clementine, who became a U.S. citizen in 2001, has been stitching together pieces of a new heartland. "I still have a very strong accent that stands out, and everyone asks, 'Where are you from?' But I think I am a part of America. I really feel that this is my home."Sheltering Lost SoulsKatya Fels Smyth, 35, one daughter, On The Rise, Cambridge, MA

As a college student at Harvard, Katya Fels Smyth spent many sleep-deprived nights volunteering in a homeless shelter and counseling at a rape crisis and sexual violence hotline. Other long nights found her recuperating from a carbon monoxide accident that disrupted her senior year. "It created space and time for me to step back and think about what I really wanted to do," she says. Ultimately, Katya tossed her dream of becoming a vet or doctor in favor of starting On The Rise, a social and counseling services center for homeless and at-risk women.

On The Rise serves up essential social service fare—employment referrals, housing programs and government benefits support—with a twist: highly individualized attention over the long-term. Women facing an abuser in court or checking into a hospital are accompanied by a trusted team member. "All of us, in our daily lives, need support," says Katya, with the authority that comes from tending to the varying needs of 100 clients each month over the past ten years. "Most people believe we can reach out to others for help. These women do not have that expectation. Their world is fundamentally different—and it's exhausting."

Sitting in her shabby-chic office, pregnant with her second child—with husband Paul Smyth, a federal prosecutor—Katya quickly summarizes her mantra: Everyone has a right to dignity and community. "Growing up, I got the sense from both my parents that the world is a very broken place, and you don't get to educate yourself out of responsibility," she says. "I had the tools and access to power that women in the shelters didn't have." What fuels Katya's devotion to these women? "A pretty healthy mix of passion and anger that women are getting screwed over," she says.

Today Katya still finds herself awake in the wee hours, but these days it's to tend to her 2-year-old daughter, Desdemona, or to work on her newest endeavor, The Full-Frame Initiative, where she'll apply some of the lessons from On The Rise nationally to high-risk families and communities. Despite all her success, she admits that "there are days when I feel like it's all about compromises. But I know I'm a much better mom if I'm doing work outside the home and helping build a better world for my daughter."Modern-Day Mother JonesSara Horowitz, 43, one daughter, Working Today, Brooklyn, NY

Sara Horowitz looks and acts every inch the third-generation attorney she is. But sometimes, particularly when she unleashes her passion for the working person, her Brooklyn-bred moxie (the kind you'd find in old-school union halls) slips out. "You had craft workers in the 1800s and industrial workers in the 1900s," Sara notes with professorial ease. "Now you have freelancers in every field. They're skilled and committed to their professions, but they don't identify with an employer, which is what the whole union movement is based on."

As founder and director of Working Today—launched in 1995, it's the parent of the Freelancers Union—Sara's mission is to protect the interests of the newest member of the labor family: independent workers, who make up about 30 percent of the workforce. Working Today's 33,000 members include the self-employed, consultants, temps and part-timers. They all look to Sara, well on her way to becoming a Mother Jones for the twenty-first century, and helping ensure the future of the labor movement in the process.

Her first plan of action at Working Today was simply to listen. "We started building what people needed and kept listening and building more," she says. First on the menu: group insurance rates; freelance workers typically do not have access to employer-based health, dental, life or disability insurance. Next came the online job bulletin board, a members-only Yellow Pages and, most recently, individual 401(k) plans.

Sara's passion for justice in the workplace straddles the home front as well. She's been married for 17 years to a partner in a law firm that represents unions, and the couple has devised a remarkable arrangement: 50-50 household responsibilities. "We divide the workweek into ten equal shifts. I do Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, my husband does those evenings, and then vice versa." She pauses before adding with a chuckle, "And my six-year-old daughter thinks that's normal."Special-Education SaviorBrenda Rogers, 38, one son, Access Center for Education, Irvine, CA

How many lawyers does it take to change the way the California school system places and instructs its 680,000 students with disabilities? None. All it takes is Brenda Rogers, the six-foot-one Xena, Activist Princess of Special Ed. Brenda is the founder and director of the three-year-old Access Center for Education (ACE), whose mission is to help parents hold their children's schools accountable to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. "Schools are not powerful authority figures that always know what they're doing," says Brenda, barely concealing a smirk. Brenda readily admits that she's had a long and troubled history with authority figures. "I was a juvenile delinquent," she declares—and, by the time she was 21, a single high school dropout on welfare with a baby.

"I remember sitting there after I had Chase, who's now sixteen, thinking, What am I going to do?" But when her son was 3, Brenda found subsidized child care through a program for the educationally and economically disadvantaged. The hitch? She had to go to college. Eight years later, Brenda graduated with a master's degree in sociology, with a PhD soon to come. Brenda is eager to underscore that the idea for ACE did not, in fact, stem from her academic training. It's not business; it's personal. "When Chase was in kindergarten, he was suspended every week because he wouldn't sit still. I didn't know what they were doing was wrong. But I knew this happy little boy was starting to turn mean." When Chase, a bright boy with behavioral issues, was placed in special ed in first grade, Brenda started on the road to self-advocacy. She met with school administrators to hammer out a suitable individual education program (IEP) and eventually filed a complaint for the school's violation of her son's civil rights. "I was playing hardball with these people, who knew the system a lot better than I did," she says, "but I have one thing that they didn't have. I have such a deep love for my child that I will stop at nothing to get him what he needs." It worked.

Chase is now an involved eleventh grader with a 2.8 GPA. But Brenda hasn't given up the larger fight. "I want to protect other mothers going through the same thing I was going through," she says. ACE has counseled about 100 parents and is gearing up to train advocacy leaders in local school communities. Plus, Brenda has a patent pending for a new playing-card set—the IEP Game—that guides parents through the IEP process. "I want to be the person that nobody was for me," Brenda says. "I want to live the story of the knight in shining armor—and I want to be the white knight."Human Rights GlobetrotterKatie Redford, 38, two children, EarthRights International, Washington, DC When Katie Redford set off on a whirlwind tour of Europe in 2000 to advocate for human rights, she was three months pregnant with son Htoo Eh and had no time to arrange for child care for her then-3-year-old daughter, Alexis. "We brought her everywhere," says Katie, ticking off a list of corporate boardrooms, impromptu meetings and press conferences.

"If you're an indigenous woman in the Amazon or in Burma, you strap your baby on your back and you go to the fields or the jungle and you gather food. Children are part of every aspect of your life. That's how my kids have been raised. They understand what work is."For Katie, work is helping to run EarthRights International (ERI), an organization she founded in 1995 with her husband, Ka Hsaw Wa, an exile from Burma. ERI is a leader in efforts to hold multinational corporations legally accountable for human rights abuses and violations overseas. These efforts include a 1998 suit against Shell/Royal Dutch Petroleum for human rights abuses in Nigeria and, most notably, ERI's case against Unocal, charging that the energy giant knowingly aided and abetted abuses in Burma. It was settled in 2005.

Their work appears to be a David and Goliath story, but Katie is no David. She grew up comfortably in Wellesley, MA, with the notion of being a "do-gooder," as she says, saving nickels for Save the Children and going to Amnesty International conferences. She volunteered at a rape crisis center in college and spent three months volunteering at a Burmese refugee camp, listening to stories of rape, murdered husbands and missing children.

In recent years, Katie says, she's been hearing of more mothers seemingly preoccupied with lavishing 24/7 attention on their kids. "I hear things like 'I don't work, because I want my kids to know they are the most important thing in the world,'" she says. "We are a country of millions who all think they are the center of the universe. My children are loved, and they know they are the most important thing to me, but there's a huge world outside