Fairtrade Fortnight begins today!

There are approximately 1.5 million farmers and workers, working across 63 countries producing Fairtrade products. This year, Fairtrade Fortnight, is asking everyone to take a step for Fairtrade. The target is to gain 1.5 million steps, one for each Fairtrade worker and farmer. These steps could simply include buying a new Fairtrade product, hosting a Fairtrade chocolate tasting session with friends, or recommending a Fairtrade product to a friend or a colleague. Basically, taking steps for Fairtrade Fortnight are about making new consumer choices.

Today is Human Rights Day! The day commemorates the date in 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, the declaration is available in 360 languages, with new translations still being added.

781 million adults across the globe cannot read or write.

This year’s theme for Human Rights Day is “My Voice Counts.” The United Nations has been hosting a series of Google+ hangouts since November 22^nd, giving the public a chance to engage with senior UN officials and leading experts on the rights of minorities, persons with disabilities, to discuss the impact of business on human rights, and beyond.

Although there have been great advancements in gender and race equality since 1948, human rights violations still happen every day all around the world. According to the Amnesty International annual report, in 2006, 20,000 people were on death row. 69 countries still use the death penalty. Similarly, in 2006, 1 in 3 women had been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused.

Today is the International Volunteer Day!

The day aims to thank all volunteers for their efforts, and to highlight the importance of volunteer work in promoting peace and sustainable development across the globe.

International Volunteer Day holds a special importance for me. My first experience of real volunteer work happened, not so long ago, in 2009. I was on my last year in high school and decided to join the school’s Habitat for Humanity club. Habitat for Humanity is an organization that aims to help “families escape the nightmare of housing poverty.” Our high school club arranged various fundraising events throughout the school year, and in May ten of us travelled to Krabi, Thailand to help rebuild a home to one of the families who lost their house in a tsunami a couple of years before. For me the experience was both fun and exciting, but I now feel that I didn’t understand the full meaning of our work until much later.

“We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to
understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.”

Edward T. Hall

“Take a stand for teachers!” is the slogan for this year’s World Teachers’ Day.

1.7 million teachers are needed for 2015

The aim of the day is to mobilize support for teachers world wide. Taking a stand for the teaching profession means providing adequate training, ongoing professional development, and protection for teachers’ rights.

A quality education offers hope and the promise of a better standard of living across the globe. There can be no quality education without competent and motivated teachers, however, which is why World Teachers’ Day aims to recognize the great efforts of teachers world wide.

Today is both the International Day of Nonviolence and the birthday of the Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi was a supporter of nonviolence

Gandhi’s birthday was chosen to mark the International Day of Nonviolence because his role as a promoter of freedom and civil rights movements around the world has been enormous. The day was established by the United Nations in 2007.

Gandhi was one of the first to distinguish between pacifism and nonviolence. Both pacifism and nonviolence oppose war and violence, but nonviolence accepts and embraces the necessity of struggle in achieving social change. Unlike some cases of pacifism, nonviolence never ignores conflict. Nonviolence has many activist elements, whereas pacifism is usually an personal, individual viewpoint and not necessarily connected to politics.

Since Gandhi’s times, nonviolence has developed into a widely accepted political philosophy. The three main categories of nonviolent action are:

1)   Protest and persuasion, i.e. street marches

2)   Non-cooperation

3)   Nonviolent interventions such as blockades and occupations

Unfortunately, most world powers still see violence as the superior technique for resolving conflicts. Scholar Theodore Roszak once said, “People try nonviolence for a week, and when it ‘doesn’t work’ they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.”

In 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population was living in cities.

Today more than 50% of the world's inhabitants live in cities.

Today is World Habitat Day, and this year’s theme is Changing Cities, Building Opportunities.

World Habitat Day was first observed in 1986. The purpose of this day is to highlight the role of shelter as a basic human right, and reflect on the state of our cities and towns around the world. This year’s urban theme was chosen because cities are engines of growth, and across the globe more and more people are moving into cities in the hope of a better future. According to research done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cities make up only 2% of the world’s surface, but they house more than 50% of the world’s population, consume 70% of the world’s energy, and are responsible for the 80% of the world’s carbon footprint. Research from Yale predicts that by 2030 10% of the world’s surface could be urban, most of this expansion happening in Asia…

Children’s book week has been happening the first full week of every October for the past 80 years.

The Twits by Roald Dahl

It is an annual celebration of reading for pleasure for children. This year’s theme for Children’s Book Week is Heroes and Heroines.

Here are a few favourite quotes from famous children’s authors to celebrate Children’s Book Week:

27^th of September was established as World Tourism Day by the UN World Tourism Association (UNWTO) 1980. The aim of the day is to raise awareness of the importance of tourism for the international community and its positive effects, socially and economically, on societies worldwide.

The theme for 2012 is Tourism and Sustainable Technology: Powering Sustainable Development. Official celebrations will take place in Maspalomas, Spain. Watch live footage of the celebrations here!

World Humanitarian Day is an annual, global celebration of people helping people.

Beyonce performed for the UN in New York.

Every year thousands of human aid workers help other people regardless of who they are and where they are. The lives of millions of people worldwide are threatened every day by natural disasters, gender-based conflict, political conflict, hunger, and migration. The global economic crisis has created an increasing number of problems such as poverty and a decline in global health. Hence, more and more humanitarian aid workers are needed across the globe. In addition, the total number of people affected by natural disasters is rising: approximately 211 million people are directly affected each year.

Today’s date, August 19^th, marks the day in 2003 when the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was bombed and 22 members of UN staff died. World Humanitarian Day honors humanitarian causes and the lives that have been lost in the cause of duty.

This year’s theme for World Humanitarian Day is ‘I was here.’ ‘I was here’ is an awareness campaign trying to promote everyone to do something good, to someone, somewhere. Pop star and icon Beyonce performed a song “I was here” at the UN headquarters in New York last Saturday, the 11^th, to honour World Humanitarian Day. A music video has been made of the event and the performance will be aired today. The goal of this year’s World Humanitarian Day is to get 1 billion people visit the online site, watch the music video, and learn more about World Humanitarian Day campaign.