Feelif technology: Feeling life under your fingers

Twelve million people are blind in India, and are robbed of their livelihoods as a result. A hugely successful chain of cataract hospitals in India helped its business by treating half its patients for free.

Increased technology in classrooms is popular among schools in the U.S. However, research suggests that its effect is sub-optimal due to low-quality software, implementation, and participants' digital skills.

Seattle risks losing about $12 million annually in federal funds unless it fixes problems that include failures to update student learning plans, deliver services outlined in those plans and provide services consistently from school to school.

At least 25 percent of female veterans were sexually abused in childhood, making it more difficult to reenter civilian life. Volunteers of America runs a holistic housing program for homeless veterans in the U.S.

The H.I.V. infection rate in San Francisco dropped drastically after the city increased testing and created programs like Rapid, which immediately offer public health insurance, antiretroviral drugs, and personal counselors for people with AIDS.

In Utah, Goldman Sachs funded the education of preschoolers and was reimbursed by the state once it was shown that the kids would not need special education. Social impact investments, like this one in Utah, can help social programs in the U.S. which are often affected by government cuts.

For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.

A prosthetist from Texas visiting Jaipur Limb workshops in Honduras saw problems with their low-cost prosthetics - the issue wasn't the design of the leg, but the technicians at the Honduras workshops were people completely new to prosthetics who were given just eight weeks of training. Thanks to his research, Jaipur established a research and development unit to improve the limb.

Fewer than one in four high-school graduates in the Sedro-Woolley and Meridian school districts, for example, go to four-year colleges. Just a little over half of all graduates in surrounding districts go to college at all. Now, the schools have begun to send college students into middle schools and high schools to mentor them and excite them to go to college.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.