Saudi Arabia has made a landmark offer to contribute $500 million to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to help with efforts to combat the global food crisis. The WFP has now achieved its target of $755 million to deal with the recent surge in food and fuel costs.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “This contribution of an unprecedented size and generosity comes not a moment too soon, given the needs of millions of people dependent on food rations.”

Next month the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will host a major summit at its Rome headquarters to discuss how agriculture can be harnessed to produce enough food to meet the demands of the world’s growing population.

Waves of xenophobic violence against immigrants this week has led to an overwhelming positive response by the South African public, through an outpouring of goods, food, blankets and money for the victims of the violence.

Gift of the Givers has set up a program to collect donations and in just a week, they have moved over R1 million worth of goods to refugee centers.

“I’ve been in this industry for 15 years and I have never seen a response like this,” says Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers. “To me, the real spirit of South Africans has been shown. We are not a xenophobic nation. We are seeing massive support. Black, White, Indian, Coloured; they are all here.” (See the full report in South Africa’s premiere Good News website)

Two people from the Maasai community of Laikipia in Kenya are to be given training in documenting and archiving their cultural heritage through a new project launched yesterday by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The two people from the Maasai community will travel with an expert from the National Museums of Kenya to the United States for intensive, hands-on training in documentary techniques and archival skills at the American Folklife Center and the Center for Documentary Studies, which are collaborating on the project with WIPO.

Join a Global Town Hall Meeting webcast from East Jerusalem linking Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders with young people from around the world, today, May 19, at noon Eastern time to find out what these courageous students and youth are doing to bring change. Also find out what should be our role as citizens of the world by joining Empower Peace and OneVoice today.

The three Israel and three Palestinian youth leaders you’ll be hearing from are youth leaders in the OneVoice Movement, a 640,000-person strong Israel-Palestinian conflict resolution organization.

In February 2007, these mideast youths used an amazing video to tell their leaders, ‘Enough!’ Watch it on the Good News Network here and read the report from Davos, where the activists talked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres and demanded a new spirit for change.