UN Day

"Let us unite, seven billion strong, in the name of the global common good"

-message for UN Day 2011 by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Today (October 31, 2011), the worlds population is expected to reach 7 BILLION.  What I find shocking is how fast our population has grown.  When I was in college (I guess it really was a long time ago, but I still feel like the same person) in my environmental science class, we talked about population and at that time, it was about 5 billion.  It's been about 15 years since I was a freshman in college studying the world population.  Think about that!

One lesson that I strive to teach my children, is a sense of global citizen.  They are children of the world and together we must all work for find peace.  I think the only way to achieve a true global community is through education and understand.  We need to learn as much as we can about each other.  Discover what we have in common and build from there.  This is really important to me.

So, you can imagine how delighted I was to find out that Lily would be participating in a UN Day celebration at her school.  All of the children were invited to choose a member country (not their own) and dress up as somebody in a traditional costume from that country.  Also, each child had to make a passport for themselves from that country.  The passport need to have pictures (either drawn or cut and pasted) and also facts about their chosen country.

Lily chose Mexico.  I was so glad that we brought with us to Singapore her Ballet Folklorico costume from Escuelita.  She got a lot of attention from the other students and moms.  It's not common for the community here to have been to Mexico or to know much about it.  There was a "Parade of Nations" and I did see a few other children dressed up from Mexico.  The most represented countries were India and China.  In Lily's class there was South Africa, Turkey, Spain, lots of soccer players from various European countries.  I saw cowboys too!  It was really beautiful.

Lily's teacher is in the middle, she's normally a blond!

You can see the sea of children at the assembly.  This was just the Junior School which is Prep, Year 1 and Year 2.  At the assembly, they called each of the 196 member nations by name and invited the children to stand when their chosen country was called. 

When I picked Lily up after school that day, she told me it was the best day ever.  She had so much fun!  It makes my heart happy to hear it!