Cultural and social norms are one of the most significant, yet largely ignored, barriers preventing women and girls accessing mobile phones and the internet. In some cases they have even resulted in death and rape. However, current efforts to bridge the digital gender divide are failing to prioritize initiatives which seek to understand, and ultimately, challenge these powerful norms, 

The ubiquity of access to personal technology among contemporary refugees is an opportunity for innovation in refugee education. Phones can provide access to resources, information, languages, curriculum, and more. Tech companies have flooded this space with possibility—new apps, online learning portals, libraries. But, often lost in this rush to help, the best ideas may start very simply and originate within refugee communities.

For the 85,000 refugees who will resettle in the US this year, mobile phones have become as essential to their daily lives as a safe, clean place to live and a steady job. [...] Mobile and internet services are now on the list of necessities. They not only keep new immigrants in touch with their families back home, but they also provide an important gateway for managing finances and sending cash home to relatives.

The roughly 2.5 billion people in the world who live on less than $2 a day are not destined to remain in a state of chronic poverty. Every few years, somewhere between ten and 30 percent of the world’s poorest households manage to escape poverty, typically by finding steady employment or through entrepreneurial activities such as growing a business or improving agricultural harvests. 

At a small store on Eighth Street near Miami's Little Havana, Armando Perez paid $25 to activate his daughter's cell phone in Cuba. Store owner Laura Benitez sat behind a glass window, typing in the phone numbers for Perez and others calling Cuba. "I call my daughter every week, even if it's just for her to say, 'Papi, I love you,'" said Perez, a thin man who left the island on a boat in 2008.

According to a new report released by the United Nations, the number of mobile-cellular subscriptions will reach a projected 6.8 billion by the end of 2013. That means that in only 6 months, there will be nearly as many mobile phone subscriptions as there are people in the world (at present the global population is just over 7 billion).