Kindness Diplomacy

From individual philanthropists to collective community and corporate donations, headlines this week in PD News showcased the myriad roles civil society can play on the global stage. While news coverage about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg featured prominently this week—he pledged to donate 99% of his wealth to charity following the birth of his daughter—his actions were part of a larger theme of kindness diplomacy, connecting global publics and causes to one another. Billionaire software giant and philanthropist Bill Gates announced Monday a “plan to create a multibillion-dollar fund to pay for research on clean and renewable energy” with the cooperation of 19 other governments and 28 billionaires from 10 nations, while a British woman has made it her “mission in life” to provide inexpensive sanitary and incontinence pads to Syrian refugees in Jordan. Meanwhile, Myanmar was voted the most “Charitable Nation in the World” by the London-based Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) for its “strong culture of giving,” while conscientious consumers around the globe “open[ed] their wallets for a good cause,” donating money, time and other resources on #GivingTuesday, an international “giving day” that encourages individuals, corporations and NGOs to work together to make a difference.

• Bill Gates May Do More to Fix Climate Crisis than World's Politicians—LA Times
• Denmark Holds First Danish Footprints Event in Vietnam—Tuoitre News
• Do COP21’s NGOs and Activist Observers Actually Affect the Negotiations?—Good Magazine
• Love It or Hate It, #GivingTuesday Has Become 'a Thing'—NPR
• The Dark Alliance of Global Philanthropy and Capitalism—Al Jazeera
• The Unlikely Sanitary Pad Missionary—BBC News
• You'll Never Guess the Most Charitable Nation in the World—NPR 

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Photo by Patrick McDonald CC BY-NC 2.0