World Kindness Day - November 13, the UN-recognised international observance

World Kindness Day on November 13 is an international observance founded by the World Kindness Movement in 1997 and observed in classrooms, charities, and workplaces across more than 30 countries. It is not a public holiday and has no required religious or commercial affiliation.

The one-line summary

International observance on November 13, founded by the World Kindness Movement (1997). Not a public holiday. Recognised indirectly through UN kindness-themed resolutions, with the strongest programming in UK, Australian, and Canadian schools.

Origin

World Kindness Day was founded in 1997 at a conference in Tokyo by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of national kindness organisations from Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US. The first World Kindness Day was held in 1998. The Movement was incorporated in Singapore in 2019 and now coordinates the annual observance internationally.

The date - November 13 - was chosen at the Tokyo conference without a recorded specific rationale. It falls at the start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and is widely discussed as an anchor date for year-end kindness programming. The date does not coincide with any major religious observance.

The World Kindness Movement

The World Kindness Movement is a coalition of national kindness organisations. Member organisations operate independently within their countries and coordinate around the November 13 observance. The Movement has been a non-profit corporation in Singapore since 2019 and is led by an elected board of member-organisation representatives. The Movement does not directly design classroom or workplace programs; member organisations do.

Major national member organisations include the UK-based World Kindness UK, the Australian Kindness Institute, Kindness Canada, and KIND in the US. Several countries have associated but non-member campaigns that align to the November 13 date - notably Random Acts of Kindness Foundation (US) which uses February for its own peak but participates in the November 13 observance.

UN kindness resolutions

World Kindness Day is not itself a UN-proclaimed international day. The UN General Assembly has adopted a series of kindness-themed resolutions in the 21st century: Resolution 53/243 (1999) on the Declaration and Programme of Action for a Culture of Peace, Resolution 65/196 (2010) highlighting the role of kindness and tolerance, and a 2024 resolution on the culture of peace. Each resolution refers back to November 13 as the World Kindness Day observance.

KIND, an international non-profit founded in the US in 2018, has campaigned since 2020 for a UN-proclaimed International Day of Kindness. As of 2026 the initiative has not been adopted by the General Assembly but has been promoted through UNESCO and the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

How it is observed

Schools run kindness challenges and classroom projects on or around November 13. Charities coordinate volunteer drives, food-bank collections, and street kindness campaigns. Employers use the day for team-building programs. The social-media hashtag #WorldKindnessDay peaks on the date. Cities and municipal councils in Canada, Australia, and the UK sometimes publish kindness proclamations.

There are no formal rituals. Unlike Eid al-Fitr or Ramadan, the day is a programming anchor rather than a ceremonial occasion.

Programming by country

The UK has the longest-running kindness programming around the day. The UK Kindness Movement coordinates classroom challenges in primary schools and runs a national Week of Kindness in the week of November 13. Australian schools observe November 13 with the Kindness Challenge, and the state of NSW promotes an annual Randwick Races Kindness Day on the same date as a community fundraiser. Canadian schools and charities observe the day with community-service programming.

The US uses both November 13 (World Kindness Day) and the February Random Acts of Kindness Week as school-year anchors. KIND coordinates the largest US programming around November 13, partnering with district school systems and major employers. Indian schools and NGOs have observed the day since the late 2000s, often aligned to Children's Day (November 14) for a two-day kindness + children programming stretch.

Relationship with other kindness days

World Kindness Day (November 13) is one of several international kindness-themed observances. Random Acts of Kindness Week (RAK Week, second week of February) is the US-anchored program. World Interfaith Harmony Week (Feb 1-7) and World Interfaith Harmony Day (Feb 4) cover related themes from a religious-relations angle. Pay It Forward Day (April 28) and National Random Acts of Kindness Day (September 1 in the US) round out the calendar.

See also the International Women's Day brief - one of the most established UN-proclaimed international observance days - for a comparison of how these international observances are typically structured.

Legal status

World Kindness Day is an international observance and carries no legal status. No country lists November 13 as a public holiday. Some schools and employers use the day as a programming anchor.

Where it is contested

The day is broadly accepted and uncontested. The most frequent critique is that single-day kindness programming can be performative - the World Kindness Movement and member organisations address this by emphasising year-round programming around the November 13 anchor. Critics within education research have also noted that pairing the November 13 anchor with Children's Day on November 14 in Indian classrooms can crowd out the dedicated programming that World Kindness Day would otherwise receive as a standalone observance.

World Kindness Day by the numbers

Sources

• World Kindness Movement: theworldkindnessmovement.org
• UN General Assembly Resolution 65/196 (2010): undocs.org
• KIND (Kindness Is Not Dead): kind.org
• Random Acts of Kindness Foundation: randomactsofkindness.org