SMILE      

Smiling is infectious
You catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner
And someone saw my grin,
When he smiled I realised,
I’d passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile
Then realised its worth,
A single SMILE just like mine
Could travel round the earth.

So if you feel a smile begin
Don’t leave it undetected,
Let’s start an epidemic quick
And get the world infected.

Taken from the book  Golden Apples by Bill Cullen

Maya Angelou, an award-winning American poet and author, was once quoted for saying:

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” The media is full of heroes every day, but today is the day that the world celebrates our she-roes: it’s International Women’s Day!

In some countries, Women's Day is a political event.

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.

Diwali is the Hindu Festival of Lights

Diwali is a five-day long celebration and means as much to Hindus as Christmas does to Christians. Diwali signifies the renewal of life and heralds the beginning of winter – when sowing crops can start.

Diwali is also a Sikh festival, especially celebrating the release from prison of the sixth guru, Hargobind, in 1619. However, Sikhs had celebrated Diwali for many years before that. The foundation stone of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the holiest place in the Sikh world, was laid on Diwali in 1577. For Jains, Diwali marks the attainment of Moksha (Nirvana, or eternal bliss) by the founder of Jainism, Lord Mahavira.

Find out more about Diwali.

11th Hour, of the 11th Day , of the 11th Month.

Armistice & Veterans Day is commemorated, especially in Europe and North America, in rememberance of the ending of the First World War. 11am on November 11th was the date chosen to end formal hostilities. The day is now used to remember all those who have lost their lives during war times. Although not a public holiday in Europe, a one-minute silence is observed at 11am. The nearest Sunday to the 11th traditionally is Remembrance Sunday when town officials place wreaths of poppies on their town’s memorials.

In Poland, 11th November is a national holiday and, besides Remembrance Day, it celebrates Polish Independence Day. In the USA, if Veterans’ Day happens to fall on a Sunday, then the following Monday is declared a public holiday. This is considered to be one of the most important holidays in America. Comemorated in Italy on 4th November.

Halloween Day is celebrated as a festival around the world.

Especially celebrated by the younger generation, this festival of All Hallowes comes about as a practice followed among the Christian population and has its origins as a Pagan Celtic festival – Samhain. It’s celebrated the night before the Christian Festival of All Saints Day. Adults create laterns for their children made from large pumkins which have been made into ghoulish faces. Children play ‘trick or treat’.

However, in the Nordic countries this is the evening when friends and relatives who have died are remembered. People often go to the cemetary and place lit candles in the snow. The sight of hundreds of candles burning in the dark, illuminated by the white snow is quite a sight.

Find out more about Halloween
Find out more about All Saints Day

Today is Anti-Slavery Day, a day to raise awareness of modern day slavery and to inspire people to eliminate it. The transatlantic slave trade was abolished and outlawed in 1807 and slavery is internationally prohibited in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, there is still an estimate of 12.3 million people worldwide forced to work for little or no pay.

Bonded labour is the least well-known, yet the most common form of modern slavery. Bonded labour, or debt bondage, means that a person’s labour is demanded as a means for repayment for a loan. A bonded labourer often works for no pay, seven days a week. Bonded labour is sometimes passed on for generations and may involve entire families. It is most common in South-Asia, in cottage industries and in factories, but it can also be found in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and South-East Asia.

Other forms of modern day slavery are forced marriage, child labour, forced labour, slavery by descent, and human trafficking.

Today is the International Day of the Girl Child.

The UN theme this year is ‘Ending Child Marriage.’ According to Choices for Girls campaign by Plan every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a girl is forced into marriage. Child marriage denies a girl of her childhood, disrupts her education, limits opportunities, and increases the possibility of her becoming a victim of violence and abuse. In most developing countries, even the girls who are not forced into marriage have very limited opportunities and are mostly expected to stay at home and do domestic work. Thirteen-year-old girl, Bintou, from Mali tells the ‘Choices for Girls’ campaign that, “I would choose manhood if I could.”

Education is a key factor in eliminating child marriage. Unfortunately, in more than 100 countries around the world school is not free and parents often choose to invest in their son’s education rather than their daughters. According to CNN only 30% of girls worldwide are enrolled in secondary school, and fewer young females are literate.

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!