Beyond FUN: Kidlink Multicultural Calendar

“Making Our World Better” by 11-year-old Nastia of Belarus

For more than 10 years, contributors from all over the world have helped build the Kidlink Multicultural Calendar, which highlights international holidays and how they are celebrated. Some entries include recipes for holiday foods, historical backgrounds for particular holidays, and traditional ways in which holidays are observed. With options that allow searches by holiday, country, or month, visitors can scan a list of world-wide celebrations for the month of October, or look up Rosh Hashanah to see how that holiday is celebrated in the U.S. and Israel. Learn about Sports Day in Japan, discover the Hindu Festival of Lights as it’s celebrated in India or Malaysia, or read that while Mother’s Day is celebrated in May in many countries, it’s celebrated in September in Panama and in October in Argentina.

A “non-commercial, user-owned organization based in Norway,” Kidlink provides “basic life-skills training of children using free educational programs.” Since the site’s inception in 1990, children from 164 countries have participated in various Kidlink programs. The site can be read in more than 30 languages and offers teachers lesson plans for programs with titles like “Who Am I?” and “I Have a Dream.” By inviting individual contributions to projects like the Multicultural Calendar, Kidlink also encourages children from around the world to network with new friends they'll probably never meet, but from whom they can learn a great deal.

“Our calendar is rich in local customs that perhaps cannot be found in books,” the Kidlink site reads. I’d say it’s rich in cultural collaborations and worldly wisdom, too.