Youth occasions
Four days about children and young people, from World Thinking Day to the International Day of the Girl Child, with dates and what to write to a young person.
World Thinking Day on 22 February belongs to Guides and Scouts worldwide. International Youth Day falls on 12 August, the International Day of the Girl Child on 11 October, and World Children's Day on 20 November marks the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
India also keeps its own Children's Day on 14 November, Nehru's birth anniversary, and a National Girl Child Day on 24 January.
The girl child days have a specific Indian context
These are not abstract observances here. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the long-running argument about sex ratios at birth all sit behind them, and a message that engages with any of it is worth more than a stock photograph of a girl in a classroom.
Writing to a young person
Skip the advice. It is the default instinct and it is almost never what gets remembered.
What does get remembered is being taken seriously: a question about what they actually think, a sentence that treats their current obsession as legitimate, a compliment about something they worked at rather than something they are.
If you are writing on behalf of a school or organisation, the useful version says what the young people themselves did that year. Naming three of them by name does more than any amount of language about the leaders of tomorrow.
For birthdays and exam results, birthday wishes and congratulations messages cover what to write, including when a result goes badly.