While working for a Turkish tech firm, Akil learned how to program for mobile phones, and decided to make a smartphone app to help Syrians get all the information they need to build new lives in Turkey. In early 2014, he and a friend launched Gherbtna, named for an Arabic word referring to the loneliness of foreign exile. [...] “Our ultimate dream for Gherbtna is to reach all refugees around the world, and help them.”

It's a crisis that has spiraled out of control with more than 65 million people now called refugees around the globe. As hundreds of young socially conscious innovators from around the globe meet in the Silicon Valley this week with investors seeking to back their projects at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), one unique organisation is seeking to tackle the unfolding disaster by reframing the entire way those fleeing their countries because of war or persecution are treated.

Missoula has a head start. Thanks in large part to the initiative of several young mothers who started an organization called Soft Landing, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) is re-establishing an office in Missoula that will serve up to 100 incoming refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the year ahead. The IRC is an officially sanctioned Voluntary Agency (VOLAG) under U.S. refugee policy. 

The asylum application is the first step towards relocation or reunion, neither of which is working. The reunion programme is limited to spouses and minors, otherwise families are prohibited from reuniting for five years, so that English teacher Thenna must choose her husband in Germany or her sons, aged 18 and 20. Ireland has received just one family and blamed “low take up” on refugees who had not wished to complete the first step of applying for asylum. Well, you try applying for asylum by Skype when you have no internet and no passport!

What if the solutions to Europe’s most pressing problems lie not in politics or diplomacy, but in art and culture? With the European Union under pressure from economic stagnation, a wave of refugees, terror attacks and the possibility of Britain leaving the bloc, more than 150 cultural figures from 37 countries — including the actor Jude Law and the architect Rem Koolhaas — gathered here at a forum last week to explore that possibility.

Ten refugee athletes will act as a symbol of hope for refugees worldwide and bring global attention to the magnitude of the refugee crisis when they take part in the Olympic Games Rio 2016 this summer. The athletes will compete for the Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) – the first of its kind – and march with the Olympic flag immediately before host nation Brazil at the Opening Ceremony.