Consulting Director of Chinese Programs from American Councils for International Education (ACIE) Mr. Anthony J. Kane visited National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in southern Taiwan on June 22, to strengthen partnership and promote public diplomacy between Taiwan and the United States. [...] They also discussed the possibility of seeking the support from NCKU’s alumni in Taiwan and in the US to support ACIE’s projects.

Now, acting as the US State Department's Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Stengel sat down with AJ+ presenter Dena Takuri on Wednesday to discuss the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES). The gathering brings together more than 1,000 young innovators, investors, and government officials with the goal of establishing socially and environmentally conscious businesses around the world.

The planet is facing a bevy of “wicked” problems, which threaten global destabilization. Issues such as climate change, food and water, biodiversity preservation, and pandemic disease cut across disciplines and borders and affect people at all levels of society. This new threat set requires cooperation between countries, but such challenges cannot be resolved by the same type of diplomacy that characterized the 20th century.

Texas leaders from a wide range of economic sectors, including a few from Dallas, but mostly from the Houston and Austin areas, came together Thursday to form the Engage Cuba Texas State Council under the Cuban advocacy group Engage Cuba, seeking to end the embargo placed on the sovereign state in 1960. [...] On a personal level, Smith is just as interested in the humanitarian aspect of helping Cuba as the economic aspect.

The state's Turkish International Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) has launched a rural development program for one of Namibia’s most important ethnic groups, the San people, an official statement said Saturday. The San, also known as the Basarwa or Khwe, have deep roots in Namibia going back some 20,000 years.

Transparency International chapters in the Caribbean plan to work together to share their expertise and experience across the region and form the Transparency International Caribbean Network. This network will bring together Transparency International chapters in Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago, one partner organisation in Guyana and one in Bahamas that recently joined plus experienced regional anti-corruption activists in St. Kitts and the Cayman Islands.

Skipping over community input seems to be common practice for class projects during my experience taking courses about Global Health at the UW. But while some may think that no one would be harmed with hypothetical school projects, this practice could have long term effects. Students can’t develop the practical skills of creating partnerships with the local communities where they someday will work.

International Day of the African Child has been celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organization of African Unity, now the African Union. It honours those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976 on that day in South Africa where thousands of black school children took to the streets in 1976, in a march more than half a mile long, to protest the inferior quality of their education and to demand their right to be taught in their own language.