“Urania” is a popular Polish astronomy magazine, one of the oldest in the world among present journals of this type. The first official issue was published in 1922, but the origins of “Urania” are even older, as in 1919 and 1920 there were published a few issues of a predecessor of “Urania” with the same title. So we can say that “Urania” and the IAU are of the same age. The role of “Urania” has been changing during these 100 years, but the magazine has been always a very important entity for the astronomical community in Poland, both professional and amateur. Thousands of pages contain an historical record of astronomy in Poland, as well as the progress of astronomy in the world, including IAU activities.

Section 3 of the FM14 focus on the The IAU National Outreach Contacts (NOC) Network. This paper also contains supplementary materials that point to poster presentations that can be found online.

As the IAU heads towards its second century, many changes have simultaneously transformed Astronomy and the human condition world-wide. Amid the amazing recent discoveries of exoplanets, primeval galaxies, and gravitational radiation, the human condition on Earth has become blazingly interconnected, yet beset with ever-increasing problems of over-population, pollution, and never-ending wars. Fossil-fueled global climate change has begun to yield perilous consequences. And the displacement of people from war-torn nations has reached levels not seen since World War II.