During a random act of interview Thursday morning, school teacher Julie Wylde revealed her expertise on the subject of random acts of kindness. She teaches it in the classroom, and practices it everyday.
Friday is the annual Guelph Community Foundation Random Act of Kindness day, a day to plant seeds of kindness far and wide in the community, both by performing acts of kindness and by gratefully being the recipient of them. It started in Guelph about seven years ago.
Wylde was walking her dog in downtown Guelph when approached to talk about the subject.
“I try to do it at least once a day,” said Wylde, who is a supporter of the Random Act of Kindness organization (www.youRAK.org). “I teach the principle of it to my students. I am all about this.”
The theme of this year’s event is Believe in Kindness, and Lianne Carter Ladner, the foundation’s marketing and communications manager, believes being on the giving or receiving side of a random act of kindness helps make believers in humanity out of people.
“This year we tried to package it a bit differently for Guelph,” Carter Ladner said. “So we’re doing Believe in Kindness. It’s the whole notion of believing in the power of doing something kind, and how, if everybody across Canada does one thing, can you imagine what that one little thing could achieve. There would have to be a little bit of a ripple effect.”
Julie Wylde believes that an act of kindness has a huge ripple effect.
“The more you do for others, the more gratitude you have, the more comes back to you,” she said. “What you think about, you bring about. There’s a power in the energy of an act of kindness. It sends out a positive vibe, and it gets passed on. That other person will think about doing something for others.”
Small acts do change the world, she added, by changing the way we think about ourselves and others.
Guelph Community Foundation hopes the entire community of Guelph will join thousands of others across Canada in proving that small acts of kindness do make a difference, Carter Ladner said. The motive behind the effort is to revitalize kindness on a mass scale, she added.
“It’s not to say that people aren’t kind, and that kindness isn’t in people’s DNA,” she said. “But we all do get busy, and we all do get sidetracked with life. So it is important to have a day where you sort of remind yourself and incorporate it into your life, one more time than you normally would.”
In past years, the people of Guelph have got behind the effort and spread the kindness around, she said. This year, as in previous years, students and schools, business owners, employees and community groups are committed to acts of kindness.
The day is not a fundraising event, but simply one to celebrate kindness through simple acts. Buy someone a coffee, give someone a small gift, compliment a stranger, congratulate someone on a good job or an achievement, or do something nice for your neighbor.
You can share your act of kindness on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin by using the tags @GuelphCF, #RAKGuelph, and #believeinkindness.
A random act of kindness can catch people off guard, but it has a powerful effect on the recipient, Carter Ladner added.
“It’s like, hey, there really is goodness in the world,” she said, adding that it acts as a reminder to be kind. “It shocks us and makes us feel good. And it makes you think, I’m going to do the same thing.”
