Australia's Kindness Day

With the aid of many people and groups throughout the nation, the Australian Kindness Movement has organised Australia's annual National Kindness Day; since 1996. National Kindness Day is held on 6th November each year, and is the beginning of a sixteen day celebration devoted to kindness and unity. It includes, on the 13th November, World Kindness Day, UNESCO's International Day of Tolerance (16th November), and the International Day for Children (20th November). While National Kindness Day is relevant to Australia, the other three days will be celebrated throughout the world. They represent a world wide promotion of global kindness and understanding, which will create a greater awareness of how kindness can help to heal the world.

While the Australian Kindness Movement promotes kindness 365 days each year, National Kindness Day is a way of drawing attention to our organisation and the benefits of kindness. The purpose of National Kindness Day is:

· To encourage the practise of being kinder. By being kinder you develop a brighter, richer, more meaningful dimension in your life, bringing pleasure and direction into your daily activities.
· To develop a greater community awareness of opportunities to be kind. This will help make communities more friendly and safer.
· To pay tribute to people and organisations dedicated to creating a kinder, more compassionate world for all of us.

National Kindness Day is an opportunity to express our national pride. The following was written several years ago by 7 year old Ashleigh of Burraneer Bay Primary School in Sydney, about living in the 'lucky country.'
I'm lucky to live in Australia because it is a very nice country to live in, and it is clean. I'm lucky to live in Australia because we do not have wars and there is nice fresh air.
I'm sure if you've been to another country you still like Australia. I love Australia and I'm never going to live anywhere else. Australia is the best place to live because there are nice places to go to, and we have lots of room. We are lucky to be having the Olympics. We are very lucky to have our own native animals and plants. We have wild birds that come to our house and we feed them and take care of them. I like Australia very, very, very much and I hope I don't have to move to another country

Ashleigh's words graphically demonstrate the pride that many of us have of being Australian and of living in Australia. Yet sometimes there is a tendency to take things for granted, to fail to appreciate what we have, and worse still, not to take action when our quality of life is being eroded in one way or another.

This is a day where we not only remind ourselves to be kinder, more considerate and
compassionate to our fellow Australians from now onward. It is also a time to ponder on why some of our positive values are beginning to fall away, and what we may be able to do to turn the situation around. If we are proud of our country, we must take action to ensure it retains every one of those things that we are proud of, rather than to shrug our shoulders, as if there was nothing we could do to prevent the slow denigration of our society.