Monday, April 16, 2012

Day 107: Speak at local high school about daily acts of kindness


This morning, I spoke to 4 classes of 16/17 year old students at John Marshall about the leaps of kindness blog.

I have to say it was one of the most profound, inspiring, exciting experiences I have ever had.

I had one girl come up to me and told me how excited she was to meet me. She was exuberant and full of energy with her excitement over the blog. She shared she volunteers a lot. It’s lovely to see a young person so interested in helping others.

Another girl came up and asked me if I could help her with her service project.

Each kid is tasked with finding one service agency or project, carry out a volunteer opportunity (or kind act ;-) and encourage someone else to do that same. I have to say, I got really excited that teachers at John Marshall are doing this.

After one of my speeches, a young guy, started picking up trash in the room, pushing in chairs, etc. He came up to me with the trash and I had a huge grin on my face. He got it. He REALLY got it. And he returned the grin.

Each kid was a recipient of kindness today – I gave them each a dove candy. Inside the dove candies are inspirations or ideas for acts of kindness. I challenged them to not just eat it, but to pay it forward. If they did eat it, I encouraged them to save the wrapper and use it as a inspiration/reminder/pivotal moment to choose to impact the world in a positive way by doing an act of kindness.

The kind acts didn’t stop in the classroom. As I was leaving the high school, I walked around and gave dove candy to each kid I saw, and explained what I was doing (daily acts of kindness and they were the recipient)…and it didn’t stop there…as I went through McDonalds, I gave out dove candies and explained what I was doing, when I arrived at work, I gave dove candy to the guy fixing the gate, another candy went to a woman going to work. ALL were excited that they were thought of.

While my intent was to go to that school and inspire students, I came away inspired and motivated to continue to do what I do.

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