The Gift a Poem campaign is becoming a permanent form of celebration of World Poetry Day by the UNESCO Associated Schools Network in many corners of the world. In these times that have suddenly and tragically surprised us with evil, war and selfishness, our campaign of peace, tenderness and wisdom is much needed by us all.
The third edition of the campaign, in 2025, was organised by member schools in 18 countries, including six that took part for the first time. These are: the Dominican Republic, Iraq, Lebanon, Montenegro, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Students from at least 32 countries on from four continents already know the Gift a Poem campaign, which is visible on our map. We received beautiful and moving reports from participating as countries. However, we believe that many more students took part as we are only counting those nations from which we have received official reports.
We are very happy that, for a third time, 9 countries agreed that encouraging pupils to donate poems to people important to them was a beautiful way of celebrating World Poetry Day together with all of the ASPnet community.
The Gift a Poem campaign („Podaruj wiersz”) is an initiative of the Polish National Commission for UNESCO and the Zbigniew Herbert Foundation, an organisation dedicated to a the prominent Polish poet, whose gesture of offering manuscripts of his own poems to friends and people important to him inspired the campaign’s creators.
We would like to invite you to read this year’s national reports, but also those from previous years. We also encourage and invite you to participate in the next editions of this beautiful campaign.