About the Author: Ann Stock serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
On Wednesday, January 18, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's All-Time Leading Scorer and New York Times' best-selling author, will serve as a Global Cultural Ambassador.
As a Cultural Ambassador, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar will work with young people worldwide and use people-to-people interactions as a means to create opportunities for greater understanding. He'll kick-off those efforts next week in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Click here to learn more.
"I am excited and honored to serve my country as a Cultural Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State," said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who has focused his efforts after his NBA career on engaging youth through socially-minded projects and education. "I look forward… more »
About the Author: Rob Lalka serves as Global Partnerships Liaison and Thomas Debass serves as Director for Global Partnerships in the Secretary of State's Office of Global Partnerships.
In the midst of the political and economic revolutions and evolutions of the Arab Spring, there is a theme emerging. It isn't as popular to talk about as the power of social media for mobilization, and it hasn't received the same media coverage as the crowds in city squares across the Middle East and North Africa, but it's a vital part of what is happening in our world.
As venture capitalist Craig Hanson so aptly stated in the San Jose Mercury News, "Entrepreneurship is the next phase of the Arab Spring."
We talked about Craig's message a great deal yesterday when we hosted the 25 entrepreneurs from Jordan who accompanied His Majesty King Abdullah II on his visit to meet with President Obama this week. At a luncheon here at the State Department, we connected these… more »
About the Author: Candace Faber serves as Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Razor wire pierces the orange sky as we drive through Kabul's haze and rush hour traffic to the Afghan National Institute of Music (ANIM). For the second year in a row, ANIM is hosting famed Afghan and international musicians for its "Winter Music Academy," an opportunity for the students to work with master teachers. Tonight, the wide community of ANIM's supporters -- including representatives from the U.S. Embassy's Public Affairs Section, which funds both the winter academy and ongoing Access English micro-scholarships -- has the delight of hearing these masters in concert. In the front row are representatives from the World Bank, and after the first song -- Henri Duparc's "L'invitation au voyage," sung by Kabul-born artist Mashal Arman -- one whispers to another, "You are in Kabul, not Paris. Kabul! Can you believe it?"
The U.S. Department of State presented the thirteenth annual Secretary of State's Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) on January 18, 2012, during a ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the Harry S. Truman building, Washington, DC. The prestigious ACE recognizes the important role of U.S. businesses in advancing good corporate governance and democratic principles worldwide. The award honors exemplary business practices, corporate social responsibility, and innovation in a company's overseas operations.
You can view a transcript of the Secretary's remarks here. more »
About the Author: Charley Johnson serves as a Presidential Management Fellow, and Priya Jaisinghani serves as a Supervisory Program Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Two years after the earthquake, Haiti is rebuilding not just brick by brick, but click by click.
The earthquake left behind a government in rubble, an economy in shambles, and a people living in makeshift camps, coping with enormous loss. Against this backdrop, the possibility of progress lives not just in the resilient spirit of the Haitian people, but also in the simple power of their mobile phones.
In June 2010, USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI). This program leveraged the private sector and the ubiquity of mobile phones to bring financial services to Haitians, 90 percent of whom didn't have… more »
DipNote is the official blog of the U.S. Department of State —a place to share stories, discuss experiences, and inspire new ideas on the important foreign policy issues of the day. more »
Across the eastern Horn of Africa, more than 11 million people -- a number greater than the populations of Houston and New York City combined -- are now in need of emergency assistance to survive. Learn more about the current crisis, including how you can help.
Dear Mr. Ford, Thank you for your support to the Syrian people. As you well know, the Asad regime is intent on using all means of violence, including…
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Spokesperson Nuland (Feb. 10): "We will have more of this declassified U.S. national available both on Robert's site in coming days but also on our new site www.stateondemand.com, where news organizations can find all of our content to pull down around the world. more »
Secretary Clinton (Feb. 9): "I want to underscore how confident we are in Italy, in Italy's future, in the extraordinary commitment that Prime Minister Monti and his government are bringing to the challenges confronting the Italian people..." more »
![Attendees of the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship listen as President Barack Obama speaks, April 26, 2010, in Washington. [AP File Photo]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0118_young_entrepeneurs_m.jpg)
![Musicians perform at the Afghan National Institute of Music in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 2012. [U.S. Embassy photo/ Public Domain]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0118_kabul_music_m.jpg)
![A customer, left, signs up for mobile banking at a supermarket on March 3, 2011, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. [USAID photo by Kendra Helmer]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/Dipnote/behind_the_scenes/2012_0117_haiti_mobile_money_m.jpg)
