As students in an innovative Pardee School of Global Studies course last spring on the challenges of forced migration learned, sometimes even the most overwhelming situations can be improved by simple, but powerful solutions. In what became a semester-long exercise leading to the creation of a smartphone app for Syrian refugees in Jordan. 

During a 10-day trip in June, we talked to officials, migrants and activists in Athens, Lesvos -- the Greek island where most refugees first set foot in Europe last year , and Thessaloniki, near the closed border of Macedonia, shutting migrants' way out. Our mission: to see if the technology that many of us use every day: phones, the internet, messaging apps, social networks -- is helping during this crisis. Or not.

Over the past year, Arafa has opened his studio apartment in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood to refugees and domestic violence victims free of charge, and he’s launched a website to help Americans across the country do the same. The concept of his site, called EmergencyBnB, resembles Airbnb, where people list their homes or a bedroom for travelers to rent by the night. 

Children like those in Zaatari, and millions of others around the world, are central to the work of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, which I joined last September. This commission is committed to the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which aims, by 2030, to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

Small towns and rural areas across the U.S. have been losing population since 2010, though the losses have shrunk to 4,000 a year in 2015 from an average of 33,000 a year earlier in the decade, according to a May report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But in many areas, refugees have helped to offset or reverse the losses.

Colleges in the U.S. are opening their doors — and their financial aid — to Syrian refugees. Over the past year, at least a dozen schools have promised to cover full or partial tuition for Syrian refugees who are accepted for enrollment. They join a coalition of more than 60 colleges that have started providing scholarships to Syrian students since the country’s civil war began in 2011.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday said Japan will accept 150 Syrians over five years, treating them not as refugees but as exchange students. The initiative accompanies other efforts by Japan to help stabilize conflict-stricken Syria and its announcement comes days before Group of Seven leaders gather for a summit in Mie Prefecture.