Did you know that Halloween is not from America but originally from Irland? If you want to find the origin you have to go back a lot of thousand years to the Celtics. For them 31st of October was end of the year. Their year was separated into summer which was seen as the “Day” and winter, the “Night”. Hence the night of 31st was the beginning of the period of the “Night”. The festival “samhain” -which means “summer's end“ in Gaelic - marked the transition from summer to winter.
The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31st, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.
People believed that on this Day the souls of death people were allowed to come back. People were scared on the one hand and reverent on the other.
To pretend from ghosts and calm the dead souls people put on big fires and destroyed their houses. In front of their house they put carved turnips with lights inside. Here we have the origin of our creepy pumpkins today. As well the Celtics put on costumes to scare the ghosts. They thought if they dressed like wild animals with scary facial expressions, the spirits would think they were also dead and not harm them… In addition to that they brought sacrifices to calm the ghosts down. Trick-or-treating has its origin exactly from this. People were putting out treats and food to placate spirits who roamed the streets at Samhain.
In 9th century after Christ Europe was Christianised. But the Irish didn’t want to give away all of their traditions.
The pope created on first of November the day of “all hallows“.  Hence the evening before was called “all hallows evening”  -> “all hallows eve” -> Halloween
In 19th century Irish people immigrated to America and brought the tradition to America. During the years the traditions changed. For example the tradition of carving a turnip turned into carving a pumpkin in America…
Black and orange are typically associated with Halloween. Orange is a symbol of strength and endurance and, along with brown and gold, stands for the harvest and autumn. Black is typically a symbol of death and darkness and acts as a reminder that Halloween once was a festival that marked the boundaries between life and death.
Countries which celebrate most are USA, Canada, Germany, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria. In Greece nobody celebrates Halloween.
Today Halloween is the second highest grossing commercial holiday after Christmas… unbelievable…
                                                                                                         by Charlotte S.

                                                                                             Article of Jule and Charlotte

Worldwide girls are discriminated and don’t have as good chances as boys have. Girls face double discrimination because of their age and gender.
In our European reality we talk about lower salary for women in jobs but in other countries, especially developing countries but not only, girls or women are not even allowed to go to school. There are 62 million girls who should be in school but are not.
We think in our century this is not up-to-date anymore, nowadays women are entitled to have equal rights, that for we as women have to fight for our rights not only in our country but also in other countries which are some steps back in terms of gender equality.
As well we have to spread the spirit of gender equality in these countries in order to get women aware of what they actually can reach and to create a will in their mind to change something. We have to insist in helping women reaching more power than they already have.
 
The Sustainable Development Goals are 17 Goals set by the United Nations in order to transform our world. It is Goal number 5 of the 17 Development Goals which is about gender equality in order to empower all women and girls. Furthermore it is about providing girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes. With this in mind, the theme for this year’s international day of the girl is “Girl’s Progress = Goals Progress: What counts for girls”. While we can applaud the ambition and potential of the Sustainable Development Goals for girls and recognize how girls’ progress is good not only for girls, but also for families, communities and society at large, we must also take this opportunity to make clear that there is still a lot that needs to change.
Much more can and needs to be done to lower inequalities for girls so it is really important to have an international day of the girl not only to make people reflect about this topic but also to spread the importance of the empowerment of girls all over the world.
 
All over the world there still exist a lot of inequalities for women especially when it comes to education. Girls do not have the same possibilities to enter primary school as boys.
There are still 31 million girls of primary school age out of school. Of these 17 million are expected never to enter school. There are 4 million fewer boys than girls out of school. Slow education progress for children today will have lifelong effects: Almost a quarter of young women aged 15 - 24 today (116 million) in developing countries have never completed primary school and so lack skills for work. Young women make up 58% of those not completing primary school. Furthermore two thirds of the analphabets in the world are female.
Education is the key to make a long-lasting change because it brings a lot of advantages in many different domains.
Educated women are more likely to find work. To earn their own money is an important step towards independence. It is important that women are independent from their husbands to be able to build their own life.
Furthermore education keeps hunger away. Mothers’ education improves children’s nutrition. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of more than a third of global child deaths. Educated mothers are more likely to ensure that their children receive the best nutrients to help them prevent or fight off ill health, know more about appropriate health and hygiene practices, and have more power in the home to make sure children’s nutrition needs are met.
Education of girls can also prevent child marriages. Child marriage usually means the end for girl’s education, vocation and her right to make life choices. Research confirms that girls who marry in childhood are at greater risk for intimate partner violence than girls of the same age who marry later. 39,000 girls are married before they turn 18, and this needs to change.
Education is a basic human right and it should be available for every single person for both boys and girls! Education will also help to inform young girls about the rights they have so they get to know about the inequalities and can stand up for their rights. No-one should accept the current situation!
 
Maybe you have heard about the brave young girl Malala Yousafzai. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. In 2014, she was nominated again and won, becoming the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Malala is a Children’s and Women’s Rights Activist who was born in Pakistan. As a child, she became an advocate for girls' education, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived, and has continued to speak out on the importance of education.
as you can see Malala is a really tough brave young women who stands up for her rights and with this she is a role model for a lot of young girls suffering from inequality!
 
Malala used every media she could reach to talk about the inequality the Taliban brought to her home town. She held speeches, became a blogger for BBC using a fake identity and she also talked on the radio. Furthermore she just continued going to school even if the Taliban has forbidden this in her hometown. That’s why the Taliban started looking for her in order to kill her.
If you want to learn more about this impressing girl Malala Yousafzai, you can not only read her book called “I am Malala” but you can also watch the movie “He named me Malala”!
 

In the middle of october we started our project with the refugees. In the camp of Serres there are about 400 refugees, all from northern Iraque.
Anna brought us (Pauline, Jule, Jan and me) to the refugee camp with all the equipment. We should already go inside by our own to set up the movie. But first we had to give our IDs to a policeman who was sitting in a policevan in front of the entrance. He wrote down our names to check that nobody stays in the camp and to ensure our security. There was a rusted fence all around, you could already see a group children playing on the big path out of concrete. Teenagers were hanging around listening to music, talking to friends or walking around. Right next to the entrance there were containers with people sitting in front on dirty, wet ground because it was raining a lot the last days. The people wore old clothes. I didn’t see anybody in jackets, a lot of them just wore shorts and shirts, some of the kids didn’t even wear shoes so they were running around bar feet while I was wearing my winter boots and winter jacket. But they didn’t really seem to care.








The movie night was inside in a building in the middle of the camp. Some people live inside this building, mostly families. Also there is a kitchen in this building where all the women went inside to wash the dishes from dinner. There was still food distribution going on when we came inside. On the way to the room all the people were really nice, saying hello and smiling. All of the teenagers were with their smartphones because there was free WIFI so called “#NETHOPE FREE WIFI”. All of them speak Kurdish and the ones who went to school are able to speak Arabic. Because of the war, though, there was no possibility for the young teenagers to learn Arabic. But quite a lot of them can speak English surprisingly good. Even small girls like six years old talked to me in English! Some of the refugees helped us setting up, mostly boys. When the little kids noticed there was going to be a movie they collected chairs from everywhere.

To start our project Anna wanted to hold a little speech for the beginning of our project but it was hard because especially the children didn’t stop shouting and we just couldn’t stop them. They were just so enthusiastic that they couldn’t calm down and I guess they are not used to be quiet in this camp without school or anything comparable. We were watching the jungle book with them. The movie was in english with arabic subtitles. When there was an exciting part the kids were so calm and showed a lot of attention in their facial expression. After the movie they were asking if we would come from now on every night because they enjoyed it a lot. So in the end we left the camp with the promise to come back the next Friday. Everybody who could speak any English was shouting goodbye, they taught us "I love you" in kurdish and lead us till the exit of the camp.

                                                                                         by Charlotte Selensky