“A ‘citizen diplomat mindset’ means being intentional when interacting with individuals from a different country by believing that one of your roles is to positively represent the United States,” explained Jennifer Clinton, president of citizen diplomacy non-profit Global Ties. “Our reality today is that citizens around the world are having much greater influence on local, national, and international relations.”

This February, Maltese-owned EC English Language Centres sent a team of eight enthusiastic EC staff volunteers hailing from all over the world, including South Korea, the UK, the US, Canada and Malta, to Ban Huoy, Cambodia, for a 10-day trip set up as part of the organisation’s most recent CSR initiative. In early 2016, EC approached the respected education charity, United World Schools (UWS), to improve the prospects of marginalised children in Cambodia.

The recently launched European Solidarity Corps could offer valuable life and work experience for young people interested in a career in global development. The initiative, launched by the European Commission, will bring together participants from different backgrounds to contribute to projects across the EU member states. Partnering with NGOs, local organizations and civil actors. 

Australia has a 64-year history of utilising volunteers in its aid program that has inspired similar programs in New Zealand, Canada and the United States, according to the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells. Still, the Australian Volunteers for International Development program is just a small piece of Australia’s aid program. 

[W]hen Cohen returned to Israel, he set to work. He met for coffee with a couple of other IDF officers, Yair Atias, 27, and Boaz Malkieli, 27, and they discussed the idea of using the thousands of Israelis going to Third World countries each year to show the world the IDF soldiers they don’t necessarily see on their television screens “live, from Gaza.” “The idea was to use the backpackers as the infrastructure for people to do ‘blue-and-white’ humanitarian work to show the real Israel to the world,” he said.

The day after he retired in 2006, dairy specialist Archie Devore headed to Russia to help farm operations update their practices. [...] Devore’s trip to Russia was the first of 28 assignments in nine different countries that the Lincoln resident has taken through a U.S. government program that has sent more than 16,000 agricultural volunteers overseas over the past 30 years.