The awards show, unusual for a cable news network, will give $100,000 to one of 10 individuals selected by viewers through a vote on the CNN Web site.

A panel that included Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra, Richard Branson, Magic Johnson and George Lopez selected the 10 finalists.

CNN's nominees this year:

» Anne Mahlum, a marathon runner from Philadelphia who started the ''Back on My Feet'' program that gets homeless people running.

» Tad Agoglia from Oklahoma, founder of First Rescue Team of America, which goes into disaster sites and helps clean up in the immediate aftermath.

» Liz McCartney, who moved from Washington to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans to help Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild.

» Maria Da Silva, a Los Angeles nanny who founded and finances the Jacaranda School for AIDS orphans in her native Malawi.

» Viola Vaughn, a Detroit native who retired to Senegal and whose tutoring of her grandchildren led to a program providing education for many other girls.

» Maria Ruiz, of El Paso, Texas, who regularly crosses the border to provide help to poor children in Juarez, Mexico.

» Yohannes Gebregeorgis, who returned from the United States to his native Ethiopia to start a program offering library books to children.

» Phymean Noun, a Cambodian genocide survivor who lives in Toronto and has opened schools and provided health services to children in her native country.

» Carolyn LeCroy, a former prison inmate from Norfolk, Va., who started The Messages Project, which films messages from prison inmates to their families.

» David Puckett, a Savannah, Ga., man who provides prosthetics and other medical equipment to poor people in Mexico.