Send a Letter

We’ve stopped writing letters.

We send e-mails instead. But finding an e-mail in your inbox is not the same as getting a letter through the postal service. A letter has a personal touch; and it can be a real pleasure to get a letter that is not a bill or a piece of junk mail.

So what can we do to encourage letter writing?
Letter writing day is held in Japan in July each year. The Japanese postal service issues a commemorative 80-yen stamp to mark the day. July has traditionally been known as Letter Month in Japan, possibly because July 7 is Start Festival, when people write letters of wishes to their God. Letter Writing Day builds on this tradition.

International Letter Writing Week is held each year in October.
This is the date when the Universal Postal Union was founded in order to facilitate international mail. The week encourages worldwide cultural exchange and friendship as a contribution to world peace. The union organizes a letter-writing competition for young people to mark the week.

Each year, there is a different theme for the competition. The national postal service promote the competition and choose a national winner. UNESCO then chooses three overall winners. The competition is open to young people under 16. Letters must be between 500 and 1,000 words in length.

Past themes have included ‘How to build a better future’ (2003),’My views on human rights’(1998), ‘A letter to the person I admire most’ (1997),’How young people can help the children of a country at war’(1993), Themes are not always serious. In 2005, contestants has to write a letter to their favourite fairytale character.

Universal Postal Union: www.upu.int
Japan Letter Writing Day: www.post.japanpost.jp/english/kitte_hagaki/stamp/tokusyu/2003/0723_letter


Amnesty’s advice on letter-writing for activists:
www.amnesty.org/campaign/letter-guide.html

I refer these information from '365 ways to change the world' by Michael Norton, interesting book to read contains lots of ideas we can do daily.