Fifteen PharmD students from the Keck School of Pharmacy embarked on an outreach trip to rural Romania to deliver much-needed medical care to citizens, according to USC News. Dr. Naomi Florea, an associate professor of clinical pharmacy, organized the two-week trip in July as part of the school’s Global Health Initiative. Three physicians and several Romanian translators accompanied the students.

Children like those in Zaatari, and millions of others around the world, are central to the work of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, which I joined last September. This commission is committed to the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which aims, by 2030, to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

Uganda is one of the most favourable environments in the world for refugees, according to the UNHCR. While many countries keep refugees in camps away from citizens, Uganda allows them to set up businesses, work for others, and move freely around the country.

Sport, as the virtuous expression of human self-improvement, honors standing in direct contact with another in the context of values ​​and respect, to seek becoming a better person. Humanitarianism and Olympism share the universal ideals of respect and dignity. Their opposites, terrorism, prejudice and violence are today our main challenges. Perhaps we should see in Olympism and the principles of humanitarianism a tool for reconciliation between peoples and a solution to these conflicts.

Americans and Chinese make friends with one another easily, and any program that brings them together is to be encouraged; there is no substitute for face-to-face conversations, which can so effectively break down stereotyping and facilitate deeper understandings. [...] I would like to see the U.S. and China jointly develop programs that use the media – both traditional and social – to enable people-to-people diplomacy to reach broader audiences. 

The Olympic Games are all about athletics and sportsmanship, for sure. But this year’s games in Rio have also put a spotlight on the environment. Sustainability is playing a big part [...] All the athletes got a chance to plant seedlings native to Brazil in silver containers on the stadium floor. After the Olympics is over, the seeds will be replanted in west Rio de Janeiro, where they will grow in a new “Athletes’ Forest.”

This summer one of the UK’s most prestigious universities provided refugees in the UK the opportunity to recharge their academic batteries by attending summer courses on a free bursary. For the third year running, King’s College London has been working in partnership with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, to offer summer school places to people who have fled persecution and conflict in their home countries. 

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.