Seoul, Korea: The second South Korean hostage shot dead by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan was identified on Tuesday as Shim Sung-min, 29, a former IT firm employee who did volunteer work to help the poor.  South Korea's foreign ministry confirmed the body was that of Shim, one of 23 Korean Christians, 18 of them women, taken captive by the Taliban nearly two weeks ago.  Read article

Singapore City, Singapore: Volunteering for good causes or social activities is rising among students, according to the Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister at a student forum.  Read article

Beijing, China: The United Nations and China agreed to promote a training project on strengthening volunteerism through the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games yesterday. the 1.4 million US dollars initiative is designed to enhance the capacity of Olympic volunteers and demonstrate volunteerism as an effective tool to achieve China's development.  Read article

London, UK: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown today put volunteering and community activism at the heart of his vision of the "British way of life", matching a commitment to celebrate society's "everyday heroes" with promises of investment in small neighbourhood groups and social campaigners.  Read article

Geneva, Switzerland: Volunteerism is an important contributor to economic development and needs closer measurement, says the Director of the Statistics Bureau of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Mr. Sylvester Young.  Read article

London, UK: A group of companies recently launched, ENGAGE Toolkit, a comprehensive guide to internationalise emlpoyee engagement for companies and NGOs.  Read article

Beijing, China: Beijing municipal officials on Monday announced a target of 400,000 city volunteers to staff urban areas outside the Olympic venues. Volunteers roughly equal the number of foreign visitors expected for the Olympics, with estimates ranging from 500,000 to 800,000.  Read article

Florida, USA: More than 350,000 volunteers removed about 7 million pounds of  debris from 34,500 miles of coastlines and waterways, along with ocean, river and lake bottoms.  Read article

Johannesburg, South Africa: The indispensable role of volunteers in helping countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals is to be explored in a new co-publication by the CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, United Nations Volunteers (UNV) and the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE).  Read article

Kandahar, Afghanistan: Health officials launched a different sort of Afghan offensive Sunday as a brigade of volunteer soldiers armed with clipboards, chalk and tiny bottles of vaccine fanned out across the city, hunting an invisible enemy that preys on the poor and the young.  Read article