The five founding members of Ithaca Welcomes Refugees might be the human embodiment of the “COEXIST” bumper sticker. They are: two protestant pastors, a Muslim American, a Jewish social studies teacher, and an aid worker who married into a Hindu family. [...] With the current Syrian crisis in mind, the city’s Common Council unanimously voted in June to declare Ithaca a welcoming community for all refugees.

After trying many ways to confront ISIS’ campaigns on the internet to recruit Westerners, in particular Americans, the U.S. State Department launched a program that seeks “to appeal to emotion rather than logic” as The New York Times said on Friday. “Daesh deprives a woman of her voice,” reads one image that is part of a new State Department program, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. 

The summit, held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., will feature a town hall with President Obama, a Congressional Forum, and an Expo with more than 100 organizations engaged with Africa. [...] The young African leaders are convening in Washington after six weeks of academic study and leadership training at 36 higher education institutions across the United States.

The Obama administration has revamped a program designed to lure foreign fighters away from extremist groups like the Islamic State, focusing on a series of new advertisements and social media posts that seek to appeal to emotion rather than logic. Money for the program, which is managed by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, tripled this year, to $16 million, after administration officials concluded that past efforts that had attempted to scare potential militants away from the extremist groups were not working.

Wang is one of about 30 Chinese students in Leiper's Fork for "Kids on Stage," an arts summer camp celebrating its 20th anniversary. The Chinese students join their American counterparts to piece together mosaic art pieces, paint faces with theatrical makeup and practice their acting chops. [...] The emphasis on the arts is a stark contrast to the highly competitive education system in China.

Diplomacy students from the UAE gained hands-on experience on a recent visit to the UAE Embassy in Washington DC, the UAE consulate and the UAE mission to the United Nations in New York. The one-week training programme, run by the Emirates Diplomatic Academy, aimed to broaden the students’ diplomatic knowledge by educating them about the partnerships between the UAE and the US in foreign affairs, business, and medical science.

A filmmaker has teamed up with a friend she met in high school in Brooklyn Heights to produce a portrait of a girls’ school in Anupshahr, India, a community that doesn’t believe in educating women. “Break the Branch,” by director Samantha Cornwell, filmed in conjunction with music and theatre teacher Melanie Closs, is described as a “lyrical, ethereal portrait of a rural Indian girls’ school in lush, sensuous color.”