Community over wifi in Garrett County, Maryland

The small rural school district of Quakertown in Bucks County has become a national model for how to use technology to transform the public school experience. The majority of students in the district take at least one class online and all ninth graders are given laptops they can take to college when they graduate.

The digital divide in America is the disparity in students' access to the internet and technology. In Philadelphia, the introduction of high-speed internet aims to address that divide.

Low budget schools across the U.S. are having students use their smartphones as learning tools inside and outside the classroom. At no extra cost they can incorporate technology into the curriculum through a myriad of applications, from homework reminder apps to free cloud document platforms like Google Docs.

School in various states in the United States are incorporating online learning into the curriculum to track student comprehension, adapt to students' learning levels, and decrease the digital divide.

First Book Marketplace, which makes quality, new books affordable for children in low-income families, is providing not only improved access to engaging educational materials, but a sense of dignity and self worth that a hodgepodge of used, donated books cannot. Additionally, the books are often used by nonprofits to further create opportunities for family bonding and to stimulate children's development.

In the Middle East, refugee camps are expensive to run-- particularly because shipping food aid is expensive, and the refugees feel victimized in an environment where they have no agency or purchasing power. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has moved refugees in Jordan out of camps and has given cash instead of in-kind aid, and new possibilities emerge with mobile money by the aid of new technology. The results have shown that refugees feel more empowered and the costs associated with their aid are reduced.

Many families in rural New Mexico still do not have high speed internet access at home. In Farmington, the public school district, a local college, and nonprofits are working to close the gap in the digital divide for students by addressing access to technology and the internet.

Solving the homeless crisis in San Francisco requires many different initiatives, some of which can be costly. North Beach Citizens is a small non-profit, founded by Francis Ford Coppola, has managed to offer temporary housing and peer support for the homeless. Since 2005, the organization has found permanent housing for over 100 clients and has operated with mostly private donations.

One in five seniors reports cutting back on basics like food or heat to afford prescription drugs - for many, cutting back on medicine led to faster health declines, increased hospitalizations and premature death. Sirum, a new nonprofit, was designed to make it easy for institutions to donate medicines with the assurance that they would be safely transported and dispensed to people who needed them.

Global social and economic problems are difficult to change. However, fan-activism fuels the interests of fans of popular young adult fiction. Books such as Harry Potter and the Hunger Games have inspired activist groups that raise awareness of global hunger, reading, and relief supplies to impoverished nations, among others. Being a fan has served as a bridge to become politically active and solve the world’s problems.