World Kindness Week

I always knew there was a Black History Month and a Breast Cancer awareness month but I never thought there would be a World Kindness Week, which runs from November 12 through November 18. World Kindness Week was started by The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. I stumbled across an article involving this special week, and then searched the web to find out if there were more organizations involved in this week. To my surprise there were a lot.

An organization D.A.N., Do Anything Nice, is encouraging people to interact and follow the special activities they have planned for each day. For example, on November 13: call a loved and on November 16: clean your room. This organization is hoping to encourage student involvement and leadership. They want to remind students that this week is full of opportunities of making a difference and the many possibilities of taking action through kindness. To find out more about this cause visit: http://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20061115230541374

Amazed by this wonderful organization, I searched for more involvement of different organizations in this special week. I went to Starbucks to see they were involved in this kindness week. Starbucks is hoping to raise awareness of this week by rewarding their local citizens. Their plan is for their employees to drive around and attach a Starbucks magnetic red cup to the car. When someone stops the person driving the car and asks about the cup, that person will be able to receive a coupon called a Cheerpass from Starbucks. That Cheerpass has a special code and when that person enters the code into the website, they will also pass on the act of goodwill that accompanies that card. This allows people to track what people are doing around the world. To find out how to get involved in this cause visit: http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/10/29/daily68.html?ana=from_rss

Finally, there is one more foundation that is donating it’s time to help people get involved in this week. The RAOK Foundation was founded in 1995 as a non-profit organization. The goal of this foundation is to inspire people to practice kindness and to “pass it on” to others. Being kind, they believe, is something that everyone can do through a variety of small--but important--ways. The RAOK Foundation offers sixteen pages of examples, among them sending a surprise letter, telling others that you love them, and paying compliments to the people in your life. This foundation is special and really helps a person get involved in this week if they want to. To get some great ideas of spreading the kindness visit: www.actsofkindness.org and select what are people doing?

I really think it is important for people to get involved and this is a great week for people to start their kindness around the world. In all of these articles, they quote that a small act of kindness can change the world, so if we all do a small act of kindness imagine the improvement to our world we will be making.