The “Culinary Diplomacy: Promoting Cultural Understanding Through Food” exchange will provide an opportunity to explore the role of food in bringing people of varied backgrounds together. The participants will meet with chefs, farmers, and culinary experts across the country.

The purpose of the video contest was for the world to tell the story of India's soft power, as they saw it. The video challenge aimed to allow individuals from different cultures and backgrounds to express their creativity, understanding and display their artistic prowess on subjects that really define our nation.

The wide-ranging effort creates an American Chef Corps, a network of culinary leaders who could be deployed to promote U.S. cooking and agricultural products abroad. “They might meet with an embassy, cook a lunch, post blogs or [write] articles, speak at events,” says [U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic] Marshall, listing the many ways participants might engage.

“Symbolic Meanings: Calligraphy and Paintings by Calligrapher Liang Hong” and “Cross- Cultural Communication with Ethnic Groups Costumes from China” are shows sponsored by the Confucius Institute at Penn State and presented by the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County.

On August 10, 1878, along the shore of a hazy blue lake in southwestern New York state, a Methodist Bishop and his flock of summer retreat parishioners kicked off a book club with big ambitions. Their four year course of independent reading aimed to raise education levels all across small town and rural America. More than 8,400 people enrolled that first year, returning to their homes to start over 10,000 local “circles” by 1900.

Isabella is one of the first chefs to be tapped by the State Department to serve as a culinary ambassador abroad, part of an ambitious new undertaking to use food as a diplomatic tool. Initiated by the U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic Marshall, the Diplomatic Culinary Partnership aims to “elevate the role of culinary engagement in America’s formal and public diplomacy efforts."

The Chinese Summer Bridge camp was launched in the summer of 2007 just a few months before the Confucius Institute at the University of Memphis (CIUM) officially opened. Since the program's inception thousands of American high school students have been invited to participate in the summer camp in China.

The initiative is supported by UQ, the UQ Confucius Institute and the Australia Chinese General Chamber of Business – headed by Mr Chiu-Hing Chan, who was a Young Queenslander of the Year in 2009 for his contribution to the ethnic Chinese community.