Bank manager Jeyes Parthiban from South India argues that the banks can do much more with microfinance to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty.

Archeological evidence shows that both religion and compassion have been part of the human experience from our earliest origins, says Andrew Stallybrass.

Before the 2011 Arab Spring, another Arab country - Lebanon - went through similar upheavals. Wadiaa Khoury looks at the lessons from this experience and asks whether the current choices being faced by Arabs are grounded in truth or half-truths.

A month before the London 2012 Olympics another more important international event takes place: The UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro. Don de Silva, who attended the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, reviews the progress made since then.

In these extracts from a talk to The Dialogue Society, Oxford, Peter Riddell describes some of the discoveries he has made during his years working to build trust between British, Europeans and the Muslim world.

In the last week a video campaign called Kony 2012 has gone viral. At the time of posting this article, over 27 million around the world have viewed it on YouTube and many more on Vimeo and other video hosting sites. The campaign, by US-based 'Invisible Children' calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, head of the Lord's Resistance Army, who is indicted by the International Criminal Court. Jean Brown from Australia, who is in touch with peacemakers in the areas impacted by Kony, writes.

Today America seems to have declared war on the poor. The US is now the most unequal society among developed countries. In 2012, more than 46 million Americans live in poverty. Twenty-two percent are children. The gap in test scores between affluent and low-income school students has grown by 40 percent since the 1960s and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites. The minimum wage is half the amount considered necessary to cover basic living expenses and save for retirement and emergencies.

To a young person the lessons offered by history and experience are like the individual threads of a tapestry. They can only be understood as one completes a section and is able to stand back and take in the bigger view. Charlotte Sawyer writes about the newly formed International Support Team of Initiatives of Change as they try to take in that bigger view.

The world's third largest democracy, Indonesia, is neither an Islamic nor a secular state, but is based on 'unity in diversity'. Miftahul Huda writes about the struggle to turn this ideal into reality.

The principle of reciprocity, or fair dealing, is well established between nations. Wadiaa Khoury asks whether this could also be applied to the question of freedom of religion.