World Food Week 2012

It's World Food Week (& tomorrow is World Food Day); this year's theme is Agricultural Cooperatives: Key to Feeding the World. Please visit this page for information, many good links, & activities that you can participate in with your family & friends. A visit to the World Food Programme site is a good idea, too, for action ideas.

(illustration via Agence Eureka)

GG & Women's Rights - Sign Our Petition (Please)

Did you know that you burn more calories when you're a a busybody pest? Yep.*

Let's get this show on the road; it's only been 15 years (!) since the Beijing Conference Women's conference. Below is a snippet from Amnesty International's petition. Please, please sign it (or go to your home country's page & sign it). We know what you're thinking (yes, we do). Oh who cares, nothing ever gets done, blah blah meow. No kidding. It is very difficult but some good is accomplished. So what is the choice? What do we do then? Nothing? This is not an option. (Besides, we know many of you hang out on Facebook & Twitter. Uh huh. And we'll track you down!) Oof. Got carried away into a case of the vapors. So sorry.

"The General Assembly has at last taken decisive action to create a new gender equality entity on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Beijing women's conference in 2010. It is a great victory for women's rights as well as for the coalition of women's and other civil society organizations. Now we must ensure that it is a robust and transformational body, capable of advancing the realization of women’s rights on the ground, urgently and effectively."

Charlotte Bunch, Founding Director, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, USA.

"In order to achieve this, the agreed new women’s agency urgently needs sustained political commitment from all governments and immediate, substantial funding to ensure its effective establishment and success."

So fer cryin' out loud, sign it. (Please & thank you)

ciao-grumble-meow/GG's editor

*No scientific proof but we are convinced; fidgeting does burns calories. In which case GG's editor will be back to her normal self by summer's end.

[stand-in for GG - who does not type - cute cat via we heart it]

International Day of Peace - 21 September

Click on any link to a humanitarian organization & you'll be doing a great thing. It may be small but it is something (we keep telling ourselves). What you do matters. More information about the official UN observance. No cynics please. Unfortunately, we have enough to spare (& then some).

A big thank you to generous D Sharon Pruitt of Pink Sherbet Photography for her lovely photograph A child's cry for peace.

ciao-meow,
GG & her harried editor

Yellow Mimosa - Week's End

We wish International Women's Day (March 8, Sunday this year) was celebrated in the U.S. as it is overseas...particularly in Italy. Everything we read says that men give women yellow mimosa flowers...but our experience is that women also give yellow mimosa to their female friends & relatives. Some years ago, when March 8 also fell on a Sunday, we raced around an unnaturally quiet Roman neighborhood, desperate to buy a bouquet to take to a friend's luncheon (having just arrived from Naples & running late). We finally found a flower shop with mimosa bunches. At the end of the encounter (for every such purchase is a social event in Italy, especially the South), the flower seller presented GG's editor with a bunch for herself with a hearty, "Auguri, bella!" And no, he was not being devilish. Just festive!

Have a great weekend & ciao-auguri-meow to our friends & sisters!

(photograph from Deirdré Straughan's blog Countries Beginning with I)

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 60 Years On

Sixty years...and ?

Schedule of events in NYC, elsewhere. Declarations, videos, ideas for celebration, brochures, & other materials to download. Forward freely. materials courtesy of the United Nations

ciao-meow,
GG

Literacy is the best remedy

©iStockphoto.com/Emrah Turudu

GG & her editor are happy to post about UN Literacy Day especially in connection to Darfur Peace & Development Organization's Text Book Drive (see Book It! post). The Darfur Schools of Peace benefit from direct supporters & from UNICEF. Please read these links on the world-wide celebrations of International Literacy Day.

Quick Facts

The United Nations' (UN) International Literacy Day is held on September 8 each year. In 2008 the day focuses on the relationship between literacy and health, with the slogan “Literacy is the best remedy.”

©UNESCO 1995-2007

Give Refugees a Hand

Since early 2001, renowned American actress Angelina Jolie has traveled the world as a Goodwill Ambassador to UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency. On World Refugee Day, she pays tribute to the forcibly uprooted and to the people who protect them.