It’s Random Acts of Kindness week!

Today is the first day of Random Acts of Kindness Week, which was started years ago by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.  I am trying to come up with some ideas that my daughter and I can do together this week so she can continue to see how wonderful it feels to make other people happy.  (Image at left courtesy of the RAK Foundation’s website.  Get a poster of kindness ideas here.)  I also recommend this website 1,000 Mitzvahs as an inspiring resource.

Each of us can make a difference in some small way every day, even if it’s just a smile sent toward a stranger.  I invite you to join us in looking for opportunities to spread kindness this week (and always).  This week, we are planning to:

• Donate used children’s books to the library.  My daughter is constantly getting new books, so we’ll talk about how some people don’t have as many.
  

  Books for donation

• Think of 3 things that we’re grateful for and give each other a compliment – something he/she did well that day – each night before bed.
• Buy and distribute $10 gift cards to people standing at intersections asking for money.  We bought these together last week when we had stopped at an intersection on our way to her music class and she asked me about the two people outside with a sign.

Gift cards

• Surprise friends/family with an e-card.
• Give canned food to the food bank via our grocery store.  
• Surprise someone with flowers.

I’ll report back and let you know how it goes.