As part of the American Music Abroad program, the Department of State and American Voices will create a series of international musical exchange tours. International touring activities will include public concerts, master classes, lecture-demonstrations, workshops, jam sessions with local musicians and media outreach.

"We congratulate the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have mobilized to this unique crisis of conscience," Carney said at a news conference on Thursday, adding the video has helped raise awareness about the "horrific activities" of the child-recruiting Lord's Resistance Army.

In a world where attention scarcity has displaced access as the new information problematic, how do you get your issue noticed? This is precisely the question that confronted Invisible Children, the international NGO that produced the viral online video “Kony 2012.”

Invisible Children has turned the myopic worldview of the adolescent -- "if I don't know about it, then it doesn't exist, but if I care about it, then it is the most important thing in the world" -- into a foreign policy prescription... Awareness of their plight achieved, child soldiers are now visible to the naked American eye.

VOA faces net cuts totaling $17 million, several times more than any other broadcaster managed and funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, VOA’s parent agency. VOA would lose 170 professional front line broadcasters and producers in the proposed budget if it is passed by Congress.

We live in a world of diverse cultures, and we know very little about social engineering and how to “build nations"...America’s capacity to maintain alliances and create cooperative networks will be an important dimension of its hard and soft power.

The soft power of women is a crucial aspect of a country's soft power. Actually, compared with men, women are a truer embodiment of the meaning of soft power. China could well realize its true prosperity once its women are fully liberated.