“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.

Black History Month (BHM) is held every October in Britain and every February in USA and Canada.

Nelson Mandela

Its aims are to:

• Promote knowledge of  Black History and Cultural Heritage
• Disseminate information on positive Black contributions to British Society
• Heighten the confidence and awareness of Black people to their cultural heritage.

The origins of BHM go as far back as the 1920s, when Carter G Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro History established Afro-Caribbean celebrations in America. Black History Month is for all of the African Diaspora. In Britain now, BHM has over 6,000 events!

There are many events about Black history and culture, including theatre performances, concerts, art exhibits, and film screenings. Entertainment highlights for Black History Month this year are FELA!, a musical of Africa’s most legendary figures; Home Grown, an exhibition on the evolution of British hip hop culture; and Picture This, a photo exhibition of 30 inspirational portraits of black Britons by John Ferguson.

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.”

Today is the first day of the seven-day Jewish Festival, Sukkot.

A Sukkah in North Carolina

Sukkot takes place on the fifth day of Yom Kippur, and is 
known to be one of the most joyous and ecstatic festivals in the Jewish calendar. The transition to Sukkot always seems very drastic because Sukkot is preceded by one of the most quiet, solemn days in the Jewish calendar.

Sukkot has a dual significance: historical and agricultural. Historically, the festival commemorates the 40-year period that the people of Israel wandered in the desert. To reflect upon this 40-year journey it is common for Jewish families to build a Sukkah, a form of temporary shelter.

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:

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.”