Candidates vying to become the next United Nations Secretary General are taking questions from the public via social media and answering concerns from member states. The five permanent Security Council members - China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – normally chose the UN chief in a secretive process. But this time, part of that process is happening on live television in a debate broadcast globally by Al Jazeera.

Sport has become an essential tool in the European Union’s soft power approach. Over the past few years, the political vision promoting economic development through sport has become a standard practice in Europe’s policies of solidarity and sustainable development. Yet, how can the European experience help improve the Olympic ideal of using sport to promote peace and prosperity?

The organization Project Everyone wants you to tell them what you really, really want. Project Everyone, which aims to get the word out about the Sustainable Development Goals created by the UN last year, has created a video based on the 1996 Spice Girls hit “Wannabe.” [...] The group presents goals such as “end violence against girls,” “quality education for all girls,” and “end child marriage.”

The top human rights body of the United Nations voted on Thursday to appoint an independent monitor to help protect gay and transgender people around the world from violence and discrimination. The U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, creates an “independent expert” charged with identifying the root causes of violence and discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, and then talking with governments about ways to protect them.

Visitors from around the world flock to the Met to view art history’s great masterpieces and attend fashionable galas, but to negotiate international relations is surely a first. New York’s premier museum recently became the unlikely venue for a high-security, invite-only meeting organized by Samantha Power [...] Mixing business with pleasure, the U.S. ambassador invited key international diplomats to tour the museum’s newest exhibition of Islamic art.

There are also thousands of organizations and people all around the world engaged in positive nonviolent and collective action. There are hundreds of indigenous environmental struggles around the world, from the US and Canada to Central and South America and Asia and Africa, resisting fossil fuel and other corporations from building pipelines, mining terminals and other controversial projects.

What do World Cup champion Abby Wambach, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jewel, and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Lakshmi Puri have in common? Each of them is a fighter in the struggle for gender equality and has overcome stacked odds to become a 21st-century champion for change.