The two-day OBOR summit, one of the most eagerly anticipated events in China this year, ended on May 15. Party mouthpieces referred to the meeting as a high-level international conference with far-reaching implications for the whole world. [...] If anything, the summit was marked by three things— big fat cheques, thunderous applause and hype surrounding president Xi Jinping’s “achievements”.[...] XI vowed pledged to provide an extra 60 billion yuan in foreign aid for countries along the economic corridor plus 2 billion yuan in emergency food aid.

Balad project manager Majd Shehabi explained how this Free Bread project had become one of the organisation’s most succesful initiatives. “We support local farmers by buying wheat directly from them. We then supervise the milling process, and handle all logistics related to distributing free bread to poverty-stricken and displaced families in liberated areas in Aleppo, Al-Atarib and Darat Izza,” he continued. 

As the official response has struggled, the crisis has given birth to a global network of new humanitarians as Syrians on the ground and overseas have come together to find ways to get aid to their beleaguered country. Unorthodox but determined, inexperienced but with a deep knowledge of their country, they’ve created aid procurement and delivery systems handing everything from food aid to hospital management.

Radio is helping Ethiopian farmers make the best of a bad situation as they deal with the effects of the worst drought in decades, writes Kevin Perkins of Canadian development organization Farm Radio International (FRI). 

The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is offering to ship rice worth 5 million baht to West African countries hit by the Ebola outbreak. The NCPO is extending its assistance through the World Health Organization (WHO) in a bid to provide humanitarian aid to Ebola patients.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has launched an international project for immediate food aid for all those affected by crises across the globe. Shaikh Mohammad directed that the project start in Gaza, which is currently under Israeli aggression, in cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the UN World Food Programme.

The Turkish Red Crescent Society is set to send 625 tons of flour to Syria as part of "Bread&Blanket for Syria," an international campaign aimed at extending humanitarian aid to Syrians forced to leave their homes due to the nearly two-year-old civil war, Turkey's Office of Public Diplomacy said Wednesday.

The reason we do it is it's part of who we are," Rudd said. "Part of America's great standing around the world since World War II is it's combination of hard power and soft power. ... U.S. aid given around the world helps their standing in the world. It's part of the American greatness that we've seen.