The pyramid of power flipped because people all around the world are clamoring to be heard, and demanding to shape their own futures. The inverted pyramid makes integrating a consideration of the attitudes and opinions of foreign publics an essential component of the foreign policy decision-making process in the 21st century.

People have spent years trying to learn from past foreign aid disappointments and still, with all these resources, the results are discouraging. This experience should have a chastening influence on the advocates of smart power. But it could be that cultural and economic development works on a different timetable than traditional foreign policy.

The library clearly has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities. Let's start from here: One, the New York Public Library is a social network with three million active users and two, the New York Public Library is a media outfit. The library has become a social network with physical and digital nodes.

Dominic Deng Diing, who escaped the violence in Sudan, raises funds to help schoolchildren there. More than 3,000 children in South Sudan attend the two-year-old New Hope Primary School, a project of Diing's Buffalo-based nonprofit group Aid and Care for Africa.

Americans continue to strongly support charitable work with their dollars last year, despite the lingering recession, says a new report. The biggest area of growth in charitable giving was in aiding international causes, such as the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

Once upon a time, Matt Damon went for a long walk in rural Zambia. The devoted family man and method philanthropist was accompanying a 14-year-old Zambian girl who had no idea that her hiking companion was an Academy Award-winning international heartthrob.

China and the United States are competing to win the hearts and minds of Third World nations by treating the sick on visiting hospital ships. A new study by the Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Centre says China embarked on its foray into naval medical diplomacy last year...such missions furthered China's new desire to expand its influence and lift its image as a responsible global stakeholder.