Objectives of International Men’s Day include a focus on men’s and boy’s health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models. It is an occasion for men to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care while highlighting the discrimination against them.

The November IMD is a significant date as it interfaces the popular ‘Movember‘ charity event and also with Universal Children’s Day on Nov 20 with which IMD forms a 48 hour celebration of men and children respectively, and of the special relationships they share.

The ability to sacrifice your needs on behalf of others is fundamental to manhood, as is honour. Manhood rites of passage the world over recognise the importance of sacrifice in the development of Manhood.

Men make sacrifices everyday in their place of work, in their role as husbands and fathers, for their families, for their friends, for their communities and for their nation. International Men’s Day is an opportunity for people everywhere of goodwill to appreciate and celebrate the men in their lives and the contribution they make to society for the greater good of all.

Methods of commemorating International Men’s Day have included public seminars, conferences, festivals and fundraisers, classroom activities at schools, radio and television programs, Church observances, and peaceful displays and marches. The manner of observing this annual day is optional; any organizations are welcome to host their own events and any appropriate forums can be used.  This year the theme is Positive Male Role Models. Should you want to choose another theme for your particular celebration you are quite at liberty to do so.

International Men’s Day is celebrated in over 60 countries of the world. Too many to list. Join us on November 19 in celebrating the contribution men and boys make to those around them, to their family and friends, their work place and the community, the nations and the world.

A great project to help keep our memories alive longer.  Schools such as Northwest Mississippi Community College are starting to digitize printed yearbooks.

Northwest Mississippi Community College (NWCC) has its roots in the system of agricultural schools set up throughout this rural state in the early years of the 20th century. First organized as Tate County Agricultural High School in 1915, the school offered college level courses in the fall of 1926. This is a collection of yearbooks from 1929 through 2012 except for nine years after 1930 to 1940 when the nation was suffering under the Great Depression.

So how are schools like this doing it?  Here’s an article from the Sun Harold explaining the process.  As I’m sure you can imagine, it involves quite a lot of work!

Will your school be the next to get in on this innovative movement?

As you may know, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which means it’s time to add a healthy dose of “Ahoy”s and “Yaaargh”s to our daily lexicon.

In the spirit of all things pirate and the daily battle to find great (and affordable) clipart, we thought we’d post a link to some of our favorite clipart sources.

So batten down the hatches and hoist the mainsails, here are our five favorite sources for pirate clipart.

1. Openclipart.org – “The Open Clipart Library (OCAL) is the largest collaborative community that creates, shares and remixes clipart. All clipart is released to the public domain and may be used in any project for free with no restrictions.”. Nuff said? Probably the best resource available for public domain clipart (pirate clipart on OCAL)

 

2. CLKER.com – A clipart repository where all the images have been released by their author into the public domain. Similar to OCAL, CLKER offers a few extra choices to round things out. (pirate clipart on CLKER)

 

3. Wikimedia Commons – More for photographs, you can occasionally find something that’s been released into the public domain. (pirate clipart on Wikimedia Commons)

 

4. Clipart.com – With subscriptions starting from $14.95 for a single week (with a 250 image/week limit for downloads), Clipart.com is a fairly priced choice to ensure that there’s a slightly higher level of quality, just make sure to get your money’s worth and download your limit. (pirate clipart on Clipart.com)

 

5. Microsoft Office – Free is free. Microsoft Office provides free clipart for use in desktop publishing. (pirate clipart on office.microsoft.com)

Want more tips and tricks? Stay tuned to the Yearbooks! blog!

We’re super excited to be releasing the next edition of Yearbooks Desktop next week!  We’ve improved functionality, re-skinned the program, and added new features such as themed banners!  Its never been easier to design a fantastic, professional  yearbook.