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Today we announce the nominees for this year's Outlook Inspirations Awards - our search for the world's most inspirational stories. You can find videos of the 20 extraordinary people and their stories at bbcworldservice.com/outlookinspirations.

One of them is 21-year-old Mohammad Sayed. Mohammad is a disabled teenager from Afghanistan who was abandoned by his family and spent his childhood living in a hospital. Now he's been adopted by an American family and has designed a comic super hero called Wheelchair Man, based on his own life story.

Victor Alban from Guayaquil in Ecuador started working as a taxi driver to support his grandchildren. Victor has terminal cancer, but for years he never told anyone. One night he confided in one of his clients, Carla Pati帽o. Carla was so moved by his story she wrote about it on social media, and Victor became an overnight sensation. Clayton Conn spoke to both of them.

Geert Kruit was just nine years old when four gunmen seized his primary school in the town of Bovensmilde in the Netherlands in 1977. Geert was held hostage for four days, along with 104 other children and their five teachers. One of the attackers was Tom Polnaija. Forty years on, the two men are now friends.

Image: Cover of comic book Wheelchair Man
Credit: Arielle Epstein and Mohammad Sayed