Technology doesn’t always come from experts with expensive equipment. William Kamkwamba’s junkyard windmill proves it.

Forced to quit school due to Malawi’s famine in 2001, William, then 14 years old, was determined to continue learning and sought out the library. Everything changed when he came across a book with a picture of a windmill.

“I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water,” said William. “I thought: ‘That could be a defense against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself.'”

William’s materials came from junkyard scraps— a tractor fan, shock absorber, bicycle frame, PVC pipe, melted PVC blades, and a generator originally designed for a bicycle.

With limited English reading ability, William created his windmill through pictures and diagrams.

The finished product was a 12-watt, 16-ft tall wood windmill, the first of three he’d build from scraps. As a result, William was able to generate power into his family’s home, pump water, and provide a source for locals to charge their mobile phones.

William’s self-sufficient, proactive approach to improving the life of his family and community is living proof that anything is possible.

Transporting Haitian mangos to U.S. grocery stores involves a lot of bumps and bruises. This simple packaging innovation keeps the mangos safer so farmers can reap the rewards of their full harvest. (Watch the video)

Devised by Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences students, the team is "creating a low-cost container and components that can be used with existing sacks and crates to minimize bruising in transit, as well as exploring ways to productively use fruit that does get bruised to generate small-scale entrepreneurship."

If this wooden box and a piece of plastic can add significant value to the supply chain, bringing in more cash for Haitian farmers, we'll say "Go Mango!" to that.

RELATED CONTENT: "The lifecycle of a Haitian mango"

What does social innovation and social impact mean to you? Rajesh Amandan, senior vice president of UNICEF Ventures and Private Sector Partnerships, defines the latest buzzwords in this video with Co.Exist from the 2011 Social Innovation Summit.

Politics, schmolitics—the Obama administration's new list of antipoverty projects has our hearts aflutter.

Global Envision’s three favorites all help entrepreneurs help themselves with innovative science and tech:

• Red tape cutter: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office conjures images of bureaucratic red-tape and stacks of paperwork no more: its new “Patents for Humanity” competition entices would-be innovators to develop poverty-fighting technology by easing the process of getting an intellectual property license. With an average processing time of 22 months, the top 50 innovators will have a golden ticket in their hands.

• Pest tracker: The solution to a maize pest in Kenya might be just right for a farmer in neighboring Uganda, but how would these farmers ever know? The U.S. Department of Agriculture is partnering with a science-based agricultural nonprofit called Plantwise to create a global knowledge bank about crop diseases and pests. As Plantwise’s team of local “plant doctors” assess problems at “plant clinics,” they’ll use their mobile phone to plant that information in the master database. Those seeds will grow.

• App finder: Speaking of apps, HP, Cisco, Accenture and ESRI have joined USAID to create a marketplace of tech ideas and applications from public and private sources. The new “app store” for development-oriented software will help scale and replicate the best ideas that might otherwise get looked over. We're just waiting for these to hit the Apple store.

RELATED CONTENT: "Made in Africa: 3 mobile apps fighting climate change"

As the Apps4Africa climate challenge announces its winners, African farmers and communities gain new market tools in tackling the everyday challenges of climate change. And who better to design these tools than Africans themselves?

The concept of the challenge is simple: Improve productivity and livelihoods while rewarding innovative approaches to climate change problems. The Apps4Africa climate challenge is modeled after the previous Apps4Africa civic challenge, which promoted “innovative technological solutions to everyday problems on issues ranging from transparency and governance to health and education.”

This time though, the target is climate change. The avenue is mobile technology, and the goal is improved productivity and profits.

Apps4Africa works in coordination with software company Appfrica International to incentivize development of mobile applications that help people adapt to local climate change, while merging input from civil society, academics and the private sector. App developers benefit as well, with monetary prizes and the potential to market their ingenuity as use of the applications spreads.

Winning applications analyze market potential and resource patterns. Here are three of our favorites:

Watching the weather: In Ghana, farmers can now access information about weather patterns and information on crop yields in a changing climate, thanks to the Farmerline application developed by Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai. Farmerline provides short- and long-term weather pattern forecasts, and helps farmers choose crops best suited for their location and projected climate patterns.

Knowing where the goods are: Eric Mutta of Tanzania received a $15,000 prize for The Grainy Bunch app. Want to monitor the movement and storage of grain in the country? Ask The Grainy Bunch. As a prime commodity for growth in Tanzania, efficiency in grain production is central to the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of residents. Mutta’s app is designed to keep tabs on Tanzania’s grain supply and minimize disruptions in its supply chain. Helping farmers and distributors track changes in production patterns lets grain move and markets thrive.

Expanding a farmer's universe: A group of designers in Uganda had market flexibility on their minds when designing the Agro Universe app. Farmers with products or livestock for sale can connect remotely with potential buyers, and will be alerted to market demands beyond their immediate area. When marketplaces go regional, every farm gets more productive.

Apps4Africa rewards ingenuity while maximizing efficiency. For Africa’s farmers, distributors, and communities, that's a winning formula.

"We will be striving for game-changing technologies that can affect upwards of one million people. Given those goals, I expect at least half of our projects to fail. But if just 10 percent are truly breakthrough solutions that can both improve lives and reduce our impact on the environment, then we will have succeeded.”

- Berkeley Lab scientist Ashok Gadgil on launching the new Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Helping people is pretty much always in vogue. But the way it gets done can go out of style.

Just like pop culture trends, the strategies that development agencies use to try to alleviate poverty fall in and out of favor. Last year, Global Envision reported on the Global Microfinance Summit, where many pointed to the weaknesses of an approach that is often lauded as a sort of silver bullet for impoverished populations.

We’ve reported on social enterprise in the past: Tom’s Shoes and Warby Parker, Oliberté, and SELCO in India are all examples. But is this a sustainable model? Check out this recent piece by GOOD Magazine, which asks some of Africa’s social entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social enterprise and the tension between making an impact and making a profit.

In Palestine, new technology is helping new graduates find job opportunities. Souktel, an organization providing mobile phone services for developing countries, understands that swift texting could spell out gainful employment for many young adults.

Souktel’s JobMatch services exhibits social innovation at its finest. In four easy steps, job-seekers can create a resume and get connections to dozens of job opportunities on their mobile device.

Step One: Register.

Step Two: Answer survey questions via SMS texting to create a mini-resume of education and job history.

Step Three: At any time, text “match me” to Souktel, which sends a list of jobs that match the personalized resume profile.

Step Four: Call the contacts provided by Souktel to set up an interview with the potential employer.

And that’s how four steps plus two thumbs could equal financial success.

RELATED CONTENT: "Geeks in Gaza"

Reporting in collaboration with Yadira Gutierrez.

More than 800 staff members in 47 countries cast a vote for their favorite innovation. Which is your favorite?

1. WINNER - People's Choice and Grand Jury: Smarter storage
Traditionally, Ethiopian farmers bury grain to keep it safe. Unfortunately, this also leads to rotten or pest-infested harvests. Mercy Corps staff partnered with the local community to design, manufacture and distribute underground grain storage bags which dramatically decreased the amount of lost grain. Farmers took to the idea and local tailors found work sewing the bags to custom sizes. Read more about this simple solution on Mercy Corps' website.

2. RUNNER UP: Make way for light
Companies selling solar products in urban Uganda don’t feel comfortable investing in rural, marginalized districts like Pader, where they suspect sales will be low. To demonstrate to the companies that local residents could and would pay for solar light, which would be a cleaner, safer and more cost-effective alternative to burning kerosene, Mercy Corps quantified the potential market and shared its findings. The team worked with solar companies to find local distribution partners and helped advertise the health benefits of the technology to pump up demand. After four months, 750 units were sold, and companies are now making additional investments on their own.

3. FINALIST: There’s a map for that
In response to landslides and flooding, Mercy Corps’ team in Colombia developed a new technique for accurately identifying households affected by disaster. The team gathered satellite images of communities from Google Map, and asked community members to pinpoint on the map their own houses and neighborhoods that experienced the damage most severely. Equitably-allocated resources reduces the potential for conflict and speeds recovery - two for one!

4. FINALIST: Bridging the gaps
Mercy Corps staff work in more than 40 countries, so how do you bring together the knowledge of so many far-flung people? Live online learning events. The organization’s “Design, Monitoring and Evaluation” group bridged the gaps created by geography, time zones and cultures by convening a virtual Mercy Corps community dedicated to sharing expertise and measuring the impact of our global work. Sustaining a “many-to-many” web of relationships between satellite offices fosters more shared learning and peer support than a typical “one-to-many” relationship stemming from headquarters.

5. FINALIST: Microinsurance for all
Much of Haiti’s economic potential rests on small entrepreneurs, usually poor people who are knocked down time and time again by disasters, illness or any unexpected shock. But small insurance policies are expensive to manage, so most companies won’t go for it. Mercy Corps’ Haiti team partnered with other groups and came up with MiCRO, which now covers 57,000 Haitians in the informal economy with a financial safety net.

ENTRANTS
6. Fruit farmers branch out
Mercy Corps’ team in Afghanistan recognized that fruit farmers could increase their yields by pruning trees, but that the country lacked a market for these services. The team jump-started a sustainable market for pruning services by training pruners and giving vouchers to farmers to pay for initial pruning services.

7. Planning for peace
How do you reduce tensions when local communities are fighting one another over resource scarcity? If you’re the Mercy Corps staff in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, you gather input from all sides of the conflict, agree on a plan for the communal use of natural resources, supplement it with income-increasing programs and work on using scarce water most effectively. And if it’s all a success, you might even turn the process into a mini-documentary for Ethiopian television, which is exactly what the team is doing.

8. Turning on the tap
In the frantic atmosphere directly following the earthquake in Haiti, many nonprofits trucked in water to give to survivors in camps. But as the dramatic effects of the disaster became clearer, Mercy Corps understood that “emergency relief” would become the norm if long-term solutions weren’t created. So Mercy Corps staff circumvented the logistical challenges of trucking in water and instead gave out vouchers so survivors could buy water from local vendors, thereby supporting the local market to continue providing water long after aid organizations have left.

9. Mobile money in Haiti
Instead of distributing paper vouchers to Haitians to buy food after the earthquake, Mercy Corps staff gave out cell phones loaded with USD$50. Haitians used the phones to buy what they needed at the store of their choice with the push of a button.

10. Bringing down the sludge hammer
If you’re fortunate enough to have a latrine in crowded urban slums, you’re probably not fortunate enough to also have the septic tank regularly emptied. City waste removal trucks can’t maneuver through the crowded streets and residents can’t pay the extra fees charged for specialized equipment used by private companies. The Mercy Corps team put their heads together and came up with two new ways to deal with waste: a motorcycle sludge removal cart and a sludge pushcart, both of which can maneuver the crowded streets of Jakarta, moving sludge to a temporary holding spot for waste removal trucks to pick up.

11. Emergency credit
Due to violent conflict, thousands of households in southern Kyrgyzstan lost family members, homes, possessions and businesses. Mercy Corps’ local microcredit institution, “Kompanion,” created an Emergency Credit Committee and a Fund for Rebuilding Communities through micro-Enterprises to assist entrepreneurs in rebuilding their businesses, damaged from the conflict.

12. AltCity
Not enough jobs exist in Lebanon, and at current population growth rates, jobs will be even more coveted in the near future. Add to that a regional deficit in social innovation and social entrepreneurship and you’ve got a tough problem. To address it, Mercy Corps supported the creation of AltCity, or “alternative city,” a hyper-resourced, collaborative, media-friendly physical space that supports a broad range of activities for civil society organizations and social innovators. A citizen journalism group, for example, could learn marketing planning, relationship modeling, graphic design and financial management skills from other groups they may never have met otherwise.

13. A warm welcome
A harsh winter wiped out 20 percent of poor herders' livestock, sending many to seek a new life in provincial centers. As they searched for jobs, they found it difficult to adjust to the urban environment. The Mercy Corps’ Mongolia team partnered with a local psychotherapy association to provide support and vocational skills training for 1,600 participants. Not only did most trainees find full-time work, but some even started their own businesses and employers began to specifically seek out candidates who had gone through the training.

14. Use the stove, save the trees
In Myanmar, a cyclone seriously damaged mangrove forests, which was the main source of fuel for cooking. To avoid further deforestation of an already fragile ecosystem, the Mercy Corps devised a two-step strategy: market fuel efficient stoves and plant new saplings. The stoves are affordable, easy to maintain and reduce the amount of wood people need to cook by about 30 percent.

15. Show me the data
Rather than trying to compare apples to oranges, the Mercy Corps Pakistan team developed a sophisticated online system to manage tons of data from very different projects across the country, while fulfilling multiple donor requests for customized reporting. Not only does this system outdo the traditional notebook and pen by keeping things organized in real-time, viewed from anywhere in the world, it also lets staff upload photos of work-in-progress with GPS locations. Now that’s a cool way to monitor project impact.

16. Goodbye baby blues
It’s one thing to know a problem exists and quite another to have data to back up your claim. It’s known that many women in Tajikistan suffer from post-partum depression, but data is needed to convince health agencies and governments to fund appropriate care. Rather than come at the problem by funding a solution that might not be widely accepted, Mercy Corps took another route. The team developed a survey to get solid numbers of depression rates and shared it with local and national leaders, who are now addressing the issue with greater understanding and more effective treatment.

17. The littlest entrepreneurs
In Tajikistan, Mercy corps partnered with a Dutch organization to create a financial literacy program for youth and these kids are going way beyond just a piggy bank. Not only are youth learning to manage savings through individual and group accounts with local co-op banks and microfinance institutions, they’re also setting up their own social enterprises! They’ve got the passion to improve their communities and invest profits into school outings and school materials, and now they’ve got the skills, too.

18. Just swipe it
The turmoil created by the international financial crises has made cash in Zimbabwe sparse and coveted. The Mercy Corps team in Zimbabwe decided that cash vouchers would be the best way to provide families with the immediate assistance they needed while supporting local stores, but safety risks made the team turn to a swipe card as the distribution method. Beneficiaries received an ATM card to buy what they need securely, saving them time formerly spent waiting in line for vouchers and saving staff time, too.

19. Back on their feet
Farmers don’t begin their day at nine o’clock and end at five, and their business cycle isn’t a neat three-month period, like a microlender would prefer. In Zimbabwe, the Mercy Corps team figured out tweaks to the norm to produce a win-win: Loan periods based on the cycle of a farmer’s crop, rapid cash flow analyses based on typical farming incomes, lending models based on trust instead of physical collateral, and market linkages with commercial buyers. Each piece of the puzzle helps farmers repay loans and banks receive payment.

And the winner of Mercy Corps’ internal innovations competition is...(drumroll, please)... Ethiopia! Despite—or very well perhaps because—of the massive drought that's hit the Horn of Africa, community members and Mercy Corps staff have hit on a solution that's both simple and cheap.

The word “innovation” doesn’t always refer to a flashy, new, life-changing product (but it’s exciting when it does!). Finding creative ways to connect the dots between needs and resources is often less sexy but packs more punch.

That’s part of the reason Mercy Corps (our parent organization) sponsors an internal innovations competition every two years. The competition recognizes that our staff around the world work closely with the populations they serve—employees are often locals themselves—so they’re highly tuned in to the nuances of the needs around them.

Global Envision often covers design competitions with social impact: the Dyson Award, the Social Good Summit, and Core77. The winning products are exciting and thought-provoking, but may never be implemented or successful in the developing world. This competition is different: the staff who come up with the ideas can work with local populations and see in real time how their innovation is working (or not working). This allows for a long, useful refinement process. It’s also the result of that close interaction with the local population. External designs usually aren’t tested at this level until long after they’ve received the ‘cool’ award.

Much of what makes Fortune 500 companies and tech giants successful is their internal support for the so-called ‘creative process.’ Making innovation a part of a company’s culture means a better end product. For nonprofits, the value of internal competitions lies in discovering ways to be more efficient with limited resources and encourages programs from all four corners of the globe to learn from one another. It's quite simple: Organizations that support innovation and collaboration are better at helping people.

So how does the competition work? Mercy Corps teams describe the challenge they tried to solve or the barrier that had to be overcome. They submit a description of their pilot program, new approach, experiment, new practice. Innovations don’t have to be 100 percent successful—the contest asks entrants to include challenges they continue to face. Sometimes learning what doesn’t work is just as powerful as success. But if these solutions can be scaled up or expanded to other countries, Mercy Corps can help even more people lead more productive lives. We'll vote for that.

Enough talk—onto the entries! Read on for the winner, top five finalists and all 19 applause-worthy, creative solutions.

Video courtesy Question Box.

For millions in the developing world who can’t just “Google it,” a box is providing the answers.

To begin, users push a green "talk" button on the metal intercom box and ask a question in their local language. An operator in a larger town with more Internet bandwidth will look up their questions online and relay the answers to the caller. The red button ends the call.

The Question Box was created by Open Mind, a nonprofit founded by Rose Shuman in partnership with the Grameen Foundation.

Internet access is not given a second thought in the developed world, but for billions around the globe, the Internet is far out of reach.

"Question Boxes leap over illiteracy, computer illiteracy, lack of networks, and language barriers," according to Shauman and fellow organizers. "They provide immediate, relevant information to people using their preferred mode of communication: speaking and listening."

Remote villages in India were the first to benefit from the Question Box in 2007. In April 2009, it was introduced in Uganda, but with modifications to fit African resources.

For example, Uganda’s Internet connection is too slow. So Question Box scrapped the physical boxes and built a network of field agents with mobile phones, common throughout Uganda. The field agents either relay users' questions to a call center or let people ask the questions themselves.

Operators search local databases created by Ugandan company Appfrica Labs, which serves as host of the call center. In the database are diverse sources of information: government statistics, answers to past questions, research papers and a repository of documents, all pertaining to the local area.

The Question Box is a powerful economic tool. With over 80 percent of Uganda's workforce employed in the agricultural sector, the ability to receive information regarding crops is essential.

“We are helping farmers make decisions regarding where to sell, what to plant and how to best take care of their crops," said Schuman. “It’s all about giving communities the ability to help themselves.”

Technology comes in many different formats. Now, information comes in a box.

Mercy Corps and Google.org are linking up to change the Gaza Strip and West Bank, one peaceful IT solution at a time.

Thanks to the Arab Developer Network Initiative (ADNI), young Palestinians will have the opportunity to develop web-based technological skills, sparking a new generation of capable, creative entrepreneurs. With the help of training sessions from Google and Mercy Corps’ seasoned experts, and additional funding from Source of Hope, ADNI is expected to open up a new professional field for Palestine’s motivated, young, job-seeking graduates.

The Challenge: For many Palestinian youth these days, unemployment is standard—the majority are jobless, despite relatively high educations. This youth bulge, created by a large baby boom in the 1980s, has ballooned during a global economic lull and left thousands of skilled 20- and 30-somethings without work. The unemployment rate for youth between 20-24 years is 66 percent in Gaza and 34 percent in the West Bank. It’s a terrible time to be young and in need of a job in the Middle East.

Palestine’s tech sector is so far not keeping up with forward-thinking tech innovations, such as cloud computing and app software. Currently, the sector represents a small niche, accounting for only five percent of the Palestinian economy. The lack of harmony between technological innovation and economic development is compounded by the alarming fact that about one percent of online content is available in Arabic.

The Opportunity: With a $900,000 grant provided by Google.org (the philanthropic branch of Google) for the first two years, and an additional $1 million provided by the Source of Hope Foundation, ADNI will have a healthy nest egg to start developing its program. The initiative includes three major components: technological and business-specific training, local and international mentorships, and seed capital investments.

What are they coming up with? Ideas already proposed by Palestinian ADNI participants include an app that turns off when entering a mosque, hand gesture recognition software, and Gaza Places, the Palestinian version of Google Maps. Mercy Corps and Google hope that investing in ambitious, fertile minds will, in turn, create dynamic innovations with social impact and the potential to produce income.

The Obstacles: Mobility and location flexibility is a well-known headache for the territorially-conscious region. However, an Internet connection allows people to work anywhere and cloud computing has changed the way we think about physical IT resources and traditional bumps in the road to developing apps. The initiative sets up a win-win situation: Palestinians receive the toolkit they need to supply an unfulfilled demand, while Google expands its interests in the Arabic-speaking market, which is ripe for paid online advertisements.

While the results of this project appear promising, ADNI still has many valleys to cross before reaching the promised land. No 3G network currently exists in the region for wireless devices. Commercial goods and materials cost a pretty penny, approximately 50 percent more than outside the borders. PayPal is not available to most. In Palestine, the platforms the global tech sector is built on simply aren't in place.

The Hope: In spite of these inconveniences, both Mercy Corps and Google are optimistic about their joint venture. “Palestinians have such a unique position," says Gisel Kordestani, Google's director of new business development. "They're well educated. They have strong English-language skills. With 88 million people in the [Middle East and North African] region getting online, they have the opportunity to build something for the Arab world."

And so Google.org, Mercy Corps and Source of Hope seem to be abiding by a proverb from one of the most notable male figures from Nazareth, who once preached: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.”

Get involved as a mentor, trainer or investor: arabtech@sea.mercycorps.org

RELATED CONTENT:What They're Saying at Startup Weekend in Gaza

It's an unlikely romance, fit for Hollywood: social change meets corporate marketing. Now, one of Tinseltown's most successful inventions is about to join the cast.

Enter the first social-entrepreneurship talent agent.

Meet Sharon Chang, founder of Yoxi.tv. The former chief creative director of 19 Entertainment, the company that produces American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, Chang has jumped into nonprofit entrepreneurship with a totally original business model.

Yoxi, her startup, is a pro bono talent development agency for "social innovation rockstars" … sponsored by corporations looking to market themselves as do-gooders … that happens to be shooting its own "reality" show … in Liberia.

It's so complicated it just might work. A company like IBM, for example, might ask to sponsor a social innovator working on putting "big data" to use in the education sector. Yoxi might sift through their roster of promising entrepreneurs and suggest Heather Hiles of Rrripple, whose project is aligned with IBM’s brand interests. Yoxi would then use its media savvy to help Hiles and her ideas hit the big time—with IBM attaching its brand to reap marketing benefits and tap fresh ideas.

Last month, Chang explained to a Forbes columnist that she'd once toyed with a more conventional TV show along these lines, presumably an Apprentice-like contest for social innovators. But she concluded that the for-profit mass media model wasn't right for her mission:

I wanted to find fresh approaches to distribution. ...Even when you have a powerful story, it’s difficult to find an equally powerful channel. I don’t think employing celebrities should be the default and/or the only answer.

Yoxi's answer, at least for now, is to design a rigorous selection process for "social innovation rockstars"—their word for the sort of ambassadors who can catch the imagination of the public and push new ideas into the mainstream. People with great ideas and the charisma to match. Here's Yoxi spokeswoman Kasia Reterska, in an email to Global Envision:

Selection of SIRs [social innovation rockstars] happens via our research process where we rate about 14 metrics around a social entrepreneur. We measure typical attributes like the success of their organization, etc., but also focus on things like a person's charisma and media savvy. Like the notion of casting a TV show or play, we feel it's essential to find entrepreneurs who, along with a great idea, are passionate and effective communicators. These are the people who will stand out in the crowd and expedite their work in the social innovation space.

Brands can sponsor specific Rockstars. … We're just as focused on finding SIRs to help a brand via shared-value ideals as we are to harness influencers around a specific topic/entrepreneur.

In other words, Yoxi's goal is to recruit, package and promote a stable of fresh-faced innovators with useful ideas, then match each with a corporation that'd fund it in exchange for the marketing benefits. If it works, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

In Haiti, cash is escaping from wallets and savings accounts are breaking free from brick-and-mortar banks.

Two years after 2010’s devastating earthquake, mobile money has taken off in the island nation. While the country has seen setbacks in many areas and continues to struggle, one bright spot is the transformation of the country’s traditional banking sector. Physical banks were wiped away by the quake and subsequent hurricane, and a mobile banking network that uses cell phones has grown up in their place.

Toting your money around on a cell phone might sound scary, but for many Haitians it’s more secure than carrying around a wallet, which isn’t protected by a PIN. The handy infographic to the right shows how a mobile money transaction works.

In the months following the quake, both Mercy Corps (our parent organization) and The Gates Foundation sponsored separate Haitian cell phone companies, Voilà and Digicel, to help mobile money take off, with the Gates Foundation offering monetary incentives for the first company to get a program off the ground and for continued improvements in order to get entrepreneurial engines revving.

For many Haitians, mobile money can open a door to personal choice. Mercy Corps has used mobile money to distribute food aid to families across Haiti and deliver payments from its cash-for-work programs. Instead of spending hours waiting in line for a cash payment or a food ration, Haitians receive a wireless money transfer on their phones once a month.

The technology holds promises for the future, too. Long-term, mobile money could be expanded so that it’s accessible to everyone for all of their personal purchases. Haitians could use mobile money to send remittances to family members in other parts of the country, according to AudienceScapes. And after visiting with Mercy Corps staff in Haiti in 2010, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the way that mobile money is creating a way for the poor to save money like never before. Most banks won’t accept very small deposits, but now a mobile phone could double as a savings account. It could blow the microsavings sector wide open.

Mobile money could also help make Haitians healthier. Even before the earthquake hit, Haiti’s public health indicators were the worst in the Western hemisphere, according to the U.S. Department of State, and those problems were only compounded by the disaster. In Kenya, one of the first countries to adopt mobile money, customers can use it to pay - and save up for - health services. Expectant mothers use it to save for health care, and in rural communities Kenyans have used the service to pay for access to clean water, reports USAID. Looking forward, a mash-up of mobile health and mobile money technologies in Haiti could lead to new insurance plans and health voucher programs, according to Health Unbound.

With mobile money quickly gaining widespread use, the developing world is leaps ahead of the developed. Mobile money launched in Kenya in 2003, according to The National Archives, but Google Wallet’s similar service in the U.S. wasn’t released until September of last year and has yet to truly take off. Maybe it’s time for American company executives to start taking a few pointers from Haiti.

Developing countries face overcrowded classrooms and empty libraries. Students have started addressing this issue by filling shelves with their own stories.

Many children in developing countries do not have books to take home or read in class. If they do, they’re usually not translated into local dialects. This means limited use by parents at home, many of whom are also illiterate. UNESCO reported in 2010 that one in five adults is illiterate. Not only learning to read but having easy access to books and other printed material is imperative to improve this staggering statistic.

While some rural communities have access to e-readers, they're few and far between. This is where innovation and imagination come in. A primary school in Chingoe, Mozambique, is filling its library with homemade books, shaping young readers by allowing them to share their own stories. The Literacy Boost program by Save the Children applies this hands-on method and has seen results. Teachers write their own short stories, children draw illustrations that serve as writing exercises, or parents tell stories to their children for transcription. Add a little string for binding and you’re set. It's an innovative way to promote and combine oral traditions with basic education.

Writing can also help children cope after disasters or hardships. Drawing or writing out their experiences is a constructive way to process emotions. Sharing these stories with their peers helps in the recovery effort while simultaneously improving important written and verbal communication skills.

While some may not ascribe a homemade library the same prestige of traditional textbooks or literature, it provides an important foundation where needed most. Children are able to read at home, engage their family and community, and boost their learning skills. No matter who wrote it, taking a book home to read is the first step in realizing the magic of education.