Overseas, marketing and public diplomacy efforts featuring posters on public transportation systems and TV ads have been underway for the past few years. These efforts all show signs of success, on both the supply side and the demand side of trade in shark fins. Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department tracked 3,100 metric tons of shark fin being imported from the island to China last year, but this year's numbers are way down.

While most of the current attention is focused on fixing what is broken with the U.S. immigration system, there are any number of existing elements that work well. One of them is the J-1 Exchange Visitor program. For more than 50 years, millions of young adult cultural visitors from around the globe have participated in America’s Exchange Visitors Program, and have returned to their home countries with a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, American culture and values.

For two weeks, American Voices offered performing arts lessons to 300 Iraqis from across the country. Classes were taught in the areas of jazz, piano, classical symphony, theater and hip hop & breakdance. I was essentially the Assistant Director of the YES Academy, and a veritable public diplomacy camp counselor. We also held smaller mini-YES Academies for close to a week in both Baghdad and Kirkuk -- the latter of which I ran as well.

At its core, the Latin Alternative Music Conference is a gathering of dedicated underdogs, rallying behind music that envisions a polyglot, multicultural, border-hopping 21st-century culture but faces stubborn barriers, in the United States, of language and radio formats. The term “Latin alternative” makes room for pop, indie-rock, electronica, hip-hop, punk and hard rock, all loosely connected by a willingness to push past divisions of genre and geography.

Holy Stoked, a small collective based in Bangalore, is working to create a community of skaters in a country where many people have never even seen a skateboard. Parks are important to any young skate scene—especially in places without great street spots—so Holy Stoked cofounders Shake and Soms reached out to Levi’s about teaming up to build a park in Bangalore. Lo and behold the jeans giant agreed to help.

Summer exchange programmes are a vibrant way for universities around the world to swap intellectually stimulating dialogues, cultures, friendships and create memories. If one wants to learn outside the textbook and curriculum, learning from the ‘university of life’ through summer exchange experiences remains a very credible way for the international community of students. Linda Agnell, director of exchange programmes, American University of Sharjah, details how students can make the most of them.

Expansion is in the pipeline for Erasmus, the European Union’s higher education exchange programme. Since its launch in 1987, more than three million students have benefited from the system, which supports cooperation between 33 countries.

Getting schools and hospitals built to the same standard as World Cup stadiums was one of the main demands made by protesters on the streets of Brazil last month. But just days after FIFA, football’s governing body, handed the national stadium in Brasilia back to its owners following the Confederations Cup, a warm-up tournament ahead of next year’s World Cup, it appears that the problem is not just overspending and late delivery. It’s also management.