Corporate Social Responsibility in its truest form has to go far beyond writing a check... Caryl Stern, President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF cited UPS' help during the earthquake in Haiti as essential to providing effective aid during the disaster.

APDS Blogger: Sarah Myers

"One of the messages we want to spread through the forum is that corporate brands are very important in developing nation brands and nations' economies," says Miller, adding that it is through telling these stories that Africa can be "positioned as the next growth frontier in terms of investment and business".

On the other hand, consumers are gravitating towards companies that are using social media to dialogue with them about social issues. A well-known example of this is the Pepsi Refresh Project that used crowdsourcing to invite consumers to co-create where Pepsi puts its charitable contributions.

In its quest to map the entire planet, Google has started in on the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The tech giant plans to work with Amazonas Sustainable Foundation, a non-profit that works to conserve the forest and improve the livelihood of communities who live there. The hope is that it will help outsiders better understand the scope and the importance of the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

Now, scores of brands with sagging fortunes in the United States are reinventing themselves as must-have luxury items in the Far East, a strategy they've adopted with particular fervor in the wake of the global economic downturn.

The university in Ghana started a decade ago by a visionary Microsoft engineer finally has its own campus. It represents the vision and commitment of Patrick Awuah, who left the security of a job writing software to pursue a crazy dream building a university in his homeland...to offer Ivy League-caliber education in Africa, to create ethical, broad-minded leaders who would go on to elevate the continent.

UBS has announced that David Hayward Evans is its new head of philanthropy and values-based investing Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore...He also managed public-private partnerships for public diplomacy campaigns undertaken by the British government in China and India.