A social media campaign aiming at delivering humanitarian aid to Somalia, a country on the brink of famine, through a Turkish Airlines flight has gone viral with backing from celebrities and people across the world. After being initiated with a tweet by Jerome Jarre, the French social media celebrity, on Wednesday, the Twitter hashtags #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia and #LoveArmyForSomalia have taken on a snowballing effect with support from a group of celebrities.

The fourth round of UN-led Syria talks, dubbed Geneva 4, wrapped up last week with a tentative agreement between warring sides on an agenda for future negotiations [...] For nine days, United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura met separately with delegations from the Syrian government and three different opposition groups in an effort to end six years of bloody war.

With plans to eventually set up a center to teach children to code, she said many of her female friends shied away from IT development because it was male-dominated. Only four out of 40 students on her degree course are women, she pointed out. Across Latin America, the participation of girls and women in technology and science has lagged far behind men, experts say.

On International Women’s Day, the feminist icon Gloria Steinem used social media to encourage participants in the A Day Without a Woman strike, even as her mind was focused on another problem. Steinem has been increasingly turning her attention to the challenges facing women and girls around the world, specifically through her work with Camfed, an organization that helps girls and young women in rural Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe receive an education.

The richness, welfare and prosperity of countries depend on the full integration of women in the development process, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said today, commemorating International Women’s Day at a ceremony in Nairobi as part of his visit to Kenya. Speaking at an event alongside the First Lady of Kenya. [...] “The truth is that north and south, east and west […] everywhere, we still have a male-dominated culture,”

The 24-year-old Massey masters student, along with her sister, Tamra Ewing, now heads up a literacy charity called Motorbike Book Club - a mobile book library for village children in Vietnam. As the name suggests, the books are transported on the back of a motorbike to places where books - let alone libraries - are hard to come by. "I'm passionate about education. I see the value in it - the power of literacy to really transform and open up children's worlds."

The Embassy of the United States of America today partnered with United Village Transformation (UVT), an American NGO, to present a “Culinary Diplomacy” program highlighting the orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP). [...] “There’s another first in Malawi: Malawi is the first country in Africa to host a “culinary diplomacy” program. Culinary diplomacy is a wonderful way to share culture and traditions.

A threatened gap in global health funding because of a new ban on some U.S. aid prompted a hastily called international meeting of about 50 governments in Brussels Thursday. The major concern is continuing to support family planning services for poor countries. At an estimated $10 billion a year, the U.S. provides the lion’s share of funding for global health services.