Ladies and gentlemen, today we want to talk to you about kindness.
We don’t know if there’s actually a kindness conspiracy (see picture) but there is a growing movement of people wanting to make the world a nicer place for other people. Some of them work alone to create little Random Acts of Kindness, but there are also various groups encouraging people to do kind deeds for others too. Interested in joining the kindness revolution? Read on!
Help Others believes that kindness is contagious and provides people with an online portal dedicated to small acts of kindness.
The Toy Society The Toy Society is a world-wide collective of toy makers – of varying skill levels– who make toys and leave them as gifts for perfect strangers.
The project was started in Australia in June 2008 by a local crafter, Bianca, as an attempt to create a ‘something for nothing’ experience for anyone who discovered a toy.
There are more than 3200 members throughout the world who have collectively gifted more than 1800 lovingly handmade toys to perfect strangers since the project began.
Join Me Join Me was accidentally started by Danny Wallace, who, after placing an ad in a newspaper, found he had crowds of people willing to join him but wanting to know why. He decided they should get together and do nice things for people, and thus a worldwide collective was born. Each Friday his ‘Joinees’ should perform Random Acts of Kindness, preferably to people they didn’t know. The Joinees have an online forum where they swap stories of their Random Acts of Kindness and suggest Acts for others to perform.
Free Hugs was started in Sydney by a young man known only as “Juan Mann”, who first offered Free Hugs on the 30th of June, 2004 in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall. It began as a simple way for this very sad man to find a reason to smile once again. It just so happened to put a smile on the faces of everyone who passed him by and those who stopped to share a Free Hug. It quickly became a worldwide hit and many people took up the project, offering free hugs to anyone who might like one. You can see a heart warming video of the start of the movement here
The Kindness Offensive is an English group renowned for orchestrating large scale random acts of kindness for unsuspecting members of the public.They team up with corporations to give away large amounts of food and gifts at different times of the year.
1,000,000 Random Acts of Kindness is an initiative started by the BBC to clock up one million acts of kindness.
There are lots of simple and low-cost ways to do kindnesses for others, to start you off, here’s a great list from Help Others. By your actions, you can help make the world a nicer place. So join the kindness revolution, go forth and make someone’s day.
Image from here
