Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year festival, marking the Jewish
month of Tishri, also celebrated as the Birthday of the World. In fact, Judaism has four “new years” which mark various legal “years”, much like 1 January marks the “New Year” of the Gregorian calendar. Rosh Hashanah is the new year for people, animals, and legal contracts. The Mishnah also sets this day aside as the new year for calculating calendar years and sabbatical (”shemitta”) and jubilee (”yovel”) years. It lasts for two days. This holiday is the first of the ”Yamim Noraim” (“Days of Awe”), the most solemn days of the Jewish year.

This year’s theme for World Maritime Day is One Hundred Years After the Titanic. In 1912, when the Titanic sank, more than 1500 people lost their lives. Two year’s later, in 1914, the first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was adopted.

This year’s theme will provide an opportunity to take stock of the developments in maritime safety since that disaster and to examine which areas of ship safety should be given priority in the years to come.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon says, “A century after the Titanic was lost in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, the IMO is striving to ensure continual improvement in safety at sea. Its work is as important now as ever.”

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!

How remarkable and diverse is language!

Language is an important part of our identities.

To give us the opportunity to celebrate this the United Nations has designed the 26th of September to be a day to commemorate the learning of languages across the world.  There are over 6000 languages spoken globally, underlying rich and beautiful cultures! This day therefore celebrates the joy of learning a new language, and hence finding out about the culture behind it. Language is the gateway to cultures. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is famously quoted for saying, “those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”

Yom Kippur is a Jewish Festival.

Yom Kippur in Israel.

Yom Kippur is the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar. It means Day of Atonement and Jewish people fast for 25 hours. It is a time when Jews can make up for the wrongs of the past year and make a firm commitment to not do the same bad thing or things again. In order to apologise to God one must pray, feel remorse, and donate to charity.

The most important part of Yom Kippur is the time spent in the synagogue. Even Jews who are not particularly religious will want to attend synagogue on Yom Kippur, the only day of the year with five services. In the Yom Kippur section of the Torah the word ‘soul’ appears five times.

The Jewish believe that on Yom Kippur God seals the verdict of each person’s fate for the upcoming year.

Yom Kippur is strictly a day of rest. So strictly, in fact, that the transportation minister of Tel Aviv has threatened to withdraw funding from the city’s public bikes if they are not closed down for Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur falls each year on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which is 9 days after the first day of Rosh Hashanah. In the Gregorian calendar the earliest date on which Yom Kippur can fall is September 14, which happened in 1899 and will happen again in 2013. This year Yom Kippur takes place on September 25th and 26th.

Find out more about Yom Kippur.

Also in September:

UN International Literacy Day – 8th

International Day of Democracy – 15th

International Ozone Day – 16th

International Day of Peace – 21st

UN International Day of Languages – 26th

World Tourism Day – 27th

Rosh Hashana: Jewish New Year – 28th

In 1981, the UN General Assembly declared an International Day of Peace.

"Imagine all the people living life in peace." John Lennon

This coincided with the opening of the UN assembly. The day calls on all nations to observe a day of ceasefire and nonviolence worldwide. The aim is to make people honour a cessation of war and hostility.

“Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding.” Albert Einstein

If you take no other measures during the year, today, at least, you
should think about the planet and do your bit to help protect our ozone layer. In 1994, The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 16^th September each year to be the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer. This commemorates the 1987 date in which the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete The Ozone Layer was signed.

The International Day of Democracy was set up to examine the
state of democracy in our world today. In 2007, the UN General Assembly declared it to be a day to encourage governments to strengthen programmes devoted to the promotion of democracy.

Democracy is a universal value that freely expresses the will of people to determine…

Global Competitiveness Report is an annual report published by the World Economic Forum that assesses the competitiveness landscape of 144 major and emerging world economies.

Switzerland tops the overall ranking fourth year in a row.

The report was first published in 1979. Today it is the most comprehensive method of assessing national competitiveness worldwide.

Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Professor of Economics, Columbia University, says that the Global Competitiveness Report provides a window for long-term trends, and allows countries to see the key areas where they must act if they want to better the productivity that will “determine their economic future.”

The report measures a set of institutions, policies, and factors that set the current and medium-term levels of economic prosperity in each country. The World Economic Forum brings these measures together and analyses each country’s ability to provide levels of prosperity to its citizens. Levels of prosperity also depend on how effectively a country uses its available resources.

2003-12 has been designated the ‘Literacy Decade: Education For All’
by the United Nations. Creating literate environments is essential to ensuring sustainable development, gender equality and poverty eradication. The UN believes that literacy is a human right and a means for social and human development. One in five adults is illiterate and of the illiterate population, two-thirds are women. Read about my experiences and see my photos of my time in Ghana teaching literacy to a group of engaging women.