Adelaide, Australia: What makes your average lab technician pack it all in to volunteer in Africa? An interview with Olivia Yacoub, a volunteer with MSF.  Read article

Queens, Australia: Students are increasingly spending their vacations immersed in a variety of volunteer work. Royal Military College student Wesley Tse spent last summer in Haiti with a religious organization helping to plan and develop a new orphanage.  Read article

Sydney, Australia: Migrants from non-English speaking countries are less likely to be volunteers than Australian-born people or migrants from English-speaking nations, a new study shows.  Read article

Sydney, Australia: Australian Volunteers International will celebrate the work and commitment of its volunteers with the launch of its new full colour coffee table book "A Place in the World: Stories from Australian Volunteers International" on International Volunteer Day, 5 December.   Read article

China has decreed that it will not rain on the main stadium during the Beijing Olympics next year. This iron-clad assurance comes from Zhang Qiang, the head of Beijing's Weather Manipulation Office, who says "we will provide a guarantee" the stadium will not be rained on through the use of anti-aircraft guns to seed silver iodide sticks into clouds that dare drift towards the arena, thus causing any rain to fall well short.

The two big issues are combating pollution and creating an open-minded, user-friendly army of 100,000 volunteers capable of meeting the demands of a half-million foreigners in a stranger world than some may have imagined.  Read article