In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women’s Day was the result.

The very first International Women’s Day was launched the following year by Clara Zetkin on 19 March (not 8 March). The date was chosen because on 19 March in the year of the 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognized for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promise he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.

Plans for the first International Women’s Day demonstration were spread by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before International Women’s Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women’s Day in Austria. Various articles were devoted to International Women’s Day: ‘Women and Parliament’, ‘The Working Women and Municipal Affairs’, ‘What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?’, etc. The articles thoroughly analyzed the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All articles emphasized the same point that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.

Success of the first International Women’s Day in 1911 exceeded all expectation.

Meetings were organized everywhere in small towns and even the villages halls were packed so full that male workers were asked to give up their places for women.

Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings.

During the largest street demonstration of 30,000 women, the police decided to remove the demonstrators’ banners so the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in Parliament.

In 1913 International Women’s Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen’s Day ever since.

During International Women’s Year in 1975, IWD was given official recognition by the United Nations and was taken up by many governments. International Women’s Day is marked by a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
Source: http://www.internationalwomensday.com/first.asp

Peer helping can take place virtually anywhere. Although elementary and secondary schools are probably the most popular sites for peer helping, peer helping programs and services have been established in universities, colleges, hospitals, clinics, community centres, unions, businesses and corporations.

Peer helping can take place at any age. Peer programs have been established for little kids, teens, young adults and senior citizens.

Peer helping takes many different forms. The term “peer helping” is a generic term which includes activities or titles such as: peer tutoring, peer support, peer facilitation, peer mediation, peer conflict resolution, peer counselling, peer education, peer ministry, peer health workers, peer ambassadors, and peer leaders. The term peer helping is used as an umbrella to include all the types of peer programs mentioned above.

While peer helping can include a variety of approaches, it is different from peer groups and self-help or support groups. Both Peer Resources and the National Peer Helpers Association have independently developed standards that help to identify peer helping. According to Peer Resources, peer helping is typically characterized by the following components:
Peers are self-nominated or selected by members of their peer group(s);
Peers are volunteers, but may receive some type of compensation for their involvement;
The peer volunteers receive need-based, goal-directed and experiential skill training from a qualified peer trainer;
The peer volunteers are supervised on a regular basis; and
The more experience the peers have, the more they are involved in the selection, training, and supervision of other peers.
Some Examples of Peer Helping might include:
Computer users seek out others for help in solving problems
Police officers help other officers deal with trauma
Elementary school students mediate conflicts between other students
Experienced employees show new employees “the ropes”
A friend listens while another friend describes a problem
Students tutor other students
Co-workers help colleagues manage work challenges
Seniors help each other with loneliness and grief
Workers act as peer referral sources for an Employee Family Assistance Program
Executives orient other managers to steps for success
High school students educate others about substance abuse prevention
Experienced parents support new parents
People who have overcome adversity help others to do the same
Hockey players coach other hockey players
Street kids educate other street kids on AIDS prevention
Source: http://www.peer.ca/peerdefinitions.html

Next, they put the conditioned dog into a shuttlebox, which consists of a low fence dividing the box into two compartments. The dog can easily see over the fence, and jump over if it wishes. So they rang the bell. Surprisingly, nothing happened! (They were expecting the dog to jump over the fence.) Then, they decided to shock the conditioned dog, and again nothing happened! The dog just pathetically laid there! Hey, what’s going! When they put a normal dog into the shuttlebox, who never experienced inescapable shock, the dog, as expected, immediately jumped over the fence to the other side. Apparently, what the conditioned dog learned in the hammock, was that trying to escape from the shocks is futile. This dog learned to be helpless! This result was opposite to that predicted by B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, which argued that the dog must have been given a positive reward (like a yummy dog biscuit) to just lie there. (In order to salvage their position, they even went so far as to suggest that the cessation of pain acted as the reward for the dog to sit, but this was not a very good argument. One could alternately argue that when the shock went on while the dog was sitting, it was being punished for sitting. Reminds me of that old joke, “Q: Why did the man pound his thumb with a hammer? A: Because it felt so good to stop.) These observations started a scientific revolution resulting in the displacement of behaviorism by cognitive psychology. What you are thinking, determines your behavior (not only the visible rewards or punishments).

The theory of learned helplessness was then extended to human behavior, providing a model for explaining depression, a state characterized by a lack of affect and feeling. Depressed people became that way because they learned to be helpless. Depressed people learned that whatever they did, is futile. During the course of their lives, depressed people apparently learned that they have no control.

Learned helplessness explained a lot of things, but then researchers began to find exceptions, of people who did not get depressed, even after many bad life experiences. Seligman discovered that a depressed person thought about the bad event in more pessimistic ways than a nondepressed person. He called this thinking, “explanatory style,” borrowing ideas from attribution theory.

For example, lets say you fail a math exam. How do you explain why? You could think: 1) I am stupid. 2) I’m not good in math. 3) I was unlucky, it was Friday the 13th. 4) The math teacher is prejudiced. 5) The math teacher grades hard. 6) I was feeling ill that day. 7) The math teacher gave an expecially hard test this time. 8- I didn’t have time to study. 9) The teacher grades on a curve. Seligman found that these explanations could be rated along three dimensions: personalization: internal vs. external, pervasiveness: specific vs. universal, and permanence: temporary vs. permanent. He found that the most pessimistic explanatory style is correlated with the most depression: The statement “I am stupid” is classified as internal (use of I), universal, and permanent. This response conveys a sense of discouragement, hopelessness, and despair. On the other hand, a more optimistic person would blame someone or something else, such as “The math teacher gave an especially hard test this time.” The most optimistic explanatory style is external, specific and temporary. Conversely, for a good event, the explanatory style reverses. For example, for a perfect score on the math exam, the depressive would say: “I was lucky that day,” discounting his intelligence. The optimist would say something much more encouraging, such as “I am smart.” We often learn explanatory styles from our parents.

There are advantages to both optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles. Certain jobs call for an optimistic outlook, such as inventing or sales. Other jobs, such as accounting or quality control, call for a more pessimistic outlook.

Seligman suggests in his book “Learned Optimism” that one can overcome depression by learning new explanatory styles. This is the basis of cognitive therapy. In such therapies, the counselor challenges the client’s beliefs and explanations of life’s events. If you feel depressed because you failed that last exam, then dispute the explanation, and learn or search for a more optimistic one according to the above criteria. Or read a few jokes. The whole self-help movement is based on the optimistic belief that we can change ourselves for the better.
Source: http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discouragement/helplessness.html