Lego releases Braille bricks to teach blind and visually impaired children

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.

Due to recent brain development research, educators are working to add more math education into pre-school and kindergarten classes. Studies show that children of this age are actually extremely receptive to numbers and learning geometry.

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.

Preschoolers in the U.S. who misbehave are increasingly being expelled. In Connecticut, trained counselors educated teachers about how to deal with emotionally traumatized kids which reduced expulsions.

Preparing the young for elementary education is a priority to nurture reading and social skills. For 16 years, Tulsa Oklahoma has instituted a state funded preschool, staffed with teachers trained in early education. Tulsa’s Pre-K initiative has shown that their children are more prepared for literacy skills and math; however, maintaining the positive results is a long-term challenge.

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.

Children who experience neglect, severe stress or sudden separation at a young age can be traumatized - without appropriate adult support, trauma can interfere with healthy brain development, inhibiting children’s ability to make good decisions, use memory or use sequential thought processes to work through problems. Head Start Trauma Smart helps support traumatized and neglected children from acting out.

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.

Universal preschool is a policy that is often hard to pass on voter referendums. But, as evidenced by examples in Detroit and New York, such an investment means that more children would do well in kindergarten, fewer would need special education or other extra help and down the line, fewer would drop out of high school, end up unemployed — or in jail.