This year, the YES alumni in Pakistan are working to help over 1,000 Pakistani people in 10 different cities over the course of a month. The alumni are working to provide these 1,000 people with ration packages for the month. This event is taking place over the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and is divided into three phases. The first phase is fund raising and distribution, the second phase is to work with orphanages and slums, and the third phase is the distribution of Eid gifts to sick children in hospitals in Pakistan.

I got into the public diplomacy game as a local hire as a Foreign Service National (FSN) working for the Israeli Foreign Ministry as a Press Officer for the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest. As such, I have a deep appreciation for others who work as FSN for various foreign ministries and the U.S. Department of State.

These refugees don't know dunks, nor do they know why a 25-year-old NBA star, coming off his breakout season, would fly more than 8,000 miles and 24 hours, risk malaria, typhoid and yellow fever, just to hang bed nets in their mud huts for the anti-malaria program Nothing But Nets. On his vacation. "Man, for a huge American sports star," said Nothing But Nets director Chris Helfrich, "he sure doesn't act like it."

What’s the greatest reward for being a cultural ambassador? According to Keola Beamer, master of the Hawaiian slack key guitar, it’s that moment when you see that you’ve truly touched someone and “you see this beautiful light in them. That’s what we do it for.” Beamer, his wife, dancer and hula master Moanalani Beamer, and fellow guitarist Jeff Peterson traveled through Brazil with the American Music Abroad (AMA) program earlier this year to share the “philosophy of Aloha, a warm philosophy of embracing other people and cultures” in the world.

“You can take Indians out of India, but not India out of Indians.” I didn’t give much credit to this often repeated statement until I moved out of India. However, even after many years of stay in wonderful Indonesia, rightly a “second home” for me, I continue to long for anything remotely connected with my homeland. Whether it’s music, cricket, cinema, food, the rich cultural heritage or even politics, I’m attracted to all things India.

Those who speculate that Iran will somehow absorb western Afghanistan into its sphere of influence when US and NATO forces drawdown in 2014 have not been through the doors of the threadbare “Public Library and Cultural Center” in Herat. Iran built the domed structure and stocked its library and classrooms seven years ago, a $190,000 project that it presented as a gift to the Afghan government. Today the center fulfils a critical need for its 700 mostly poor Afghan student members: English, math, art, Quran, and computer classes, and a study hall to prepare for university entrance exams.

But as the month of Ramadan draws to a close, the main rebel group, MILF, and their followers, said they are praying that the talks, already reportedly at an advanced stage, would result in a final agreement by 2014. That deal could give the area a homeland and a separate government, and would end a conflict that has killed 120,000 people over the past four decades. Negotiations will resume in mid-August in Malaysia after Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the end of Ramadan.