Attorney Tom Jennings said he was just looking to brush up on his Russian when he got involved in Citizen Diplomacy’s cultural exchange program in 1998. The Jennings have opened their home to more than three dozen visitors “and deal with many others,” said Tom.“The stories could go on forever, but the central theme is it’s an opportunity available to people in our area. Citizen Diplomacy is peacemaking at the retail level, one handshake at a time,” he said.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi is currently on a tour across Africa, where he is busy shaking hands with dignitaries and posing for photo ops, . Wang's New Year's visits to the African continent are almost a tradition, this time he is in Madagascar, Tanzania, Zambia, Congo and Nigeria. Zambia wants to become a transport and logistics hub in southern Africa and Wang has promised help. [...] China is investing heavily in Africa. 

Turkey's humanitarian aid organization, the Turkish Red Crescent, has entered a period of renewal with its newly elected president, Dr. Kerem Kınık. [...] the Turkish Red Crescent aims to turn into an order-setting humanitarian aid organization in international platforms in order to highlight humanitarian crises in areas such as Palestine, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa.

For him, this paradigm must acknowledge the cultural and historical factors at the heart of many identity-based conflicts and advance the role of nation-states in resolving them. Cox calls this emerging paradigm "Faith-Based Diplomacy".

Given the troubled history between South and North Korea, it's difficult to imagine that the sides marched under the same flag at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. The unified marches, also held at the Sydney and Athens Games, fell in line with a reconciliatory mood on the peninsula as well as the idea that, in the words of the late Nelson Mandela, sport "has the power to change the world."