Random Acts Of Kindness Day 2023: Stories That Show How It’s Done

ACROSS AMERICA — Gestures don’t have to be big and grand on Random Acts of Kindness Day, which will be celebrated around the world Friday.

If you decide to participate — and why wouldn’t you? — the gesture can be small, yet have ripple effects that go to the heart of the observance: to create a culture of kindness that extends beyond Feb. 17.

Sometimes, grand gestures start with a simple desire to make someone else’s life easier and end with a huge multiplier effect, as it did 15-year-old with Lily Gardiner, a 15-year-old high school freshman in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her friend Chad Chlebowski, 14, uses a motorized wheelchair to get around.

Gardiner wasn’t in a great place and dreaded going to school until she and Chlebowski met. She credits Chlebowski, the kind of friend who “can make you happy even on your worst day,” with helping her change her outlook.

That was the first act of kindness.

The second came when Gardiner learned of the difficulties her friend was having with his new wheelchair — designed to give him more independence but paradoxically having an opposite effect. The new, more comfortable chair is too large for Chlebowski’s at-home lift, and for the car that takes him where he needs to go.

Gardiner started a GoFundMe campaign that, since it was launched late last month, has raised more than $31,000 to buy Chlebowski’s family the equipment they need.

That total was raised through 760 individual acts of kindness by people whose donations were motivated by Chlebowski’s story and Gardiner’s desire to help him.

“Being aware of what you have, and using all of your power to give back to others, it’s so important,” she told Patch. “Chad is always in a good mood, and always the best version of himself. That’s taught me a lot.” Read more below:

• Teen Finds Being Kind Makes Her Feel Better

Kindness is not only contagious, but Gardiner’s improved outlook is completely in keeping with the science behind kindness.

Oxytocin, called the “love hormone,” plays a role in social bonds. According to University Hospitals in Cleveland, as oxytocin levels increase during an experience involving a kind act, whether s a giver or receiver, cardiovascular health improves. It can strengthen the immune system, improve energy, reduce aches and pains, and boost self-esteem.

Just When You Need It Most

Sometimes, kindness comes out of nowhere when it’s needed the most.

Jennifer Bettelli, of New Lenox, Illinois, was having one of the worst days of her life — her dog had just been hit by a car — when a stranger stepped in and helped her do what she had to do for her dying dog. She told Patch she had never experienced such kindness before.

“ ‘I’m here, you’re not by yourself,’ ”Bettilli recalled the man saying. “And he just walked me through it.” Read more below:

• As Dog Lay Dying, Stranger’s Kindness Was Everything

At other times, showing kindness is proactive.

Last year, police in Oceanside, California, extended their Secret Santa Operation into a year-long Acts of Kindness project, made possible with a $20,000 donation from Trauma Intervention Programs. The founder, Wayne Fortin, said police officers on the front lines encounter people “who need kindness and a helping hand on a regular basis.” Read more below:

• Police Commit Random Acts Of Kindness

The Kids Are Paying Attention

Pete and Dimitra Bottos, who own a pizzeria in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, involved their whole family in a kind act that Dr. Stuart Brilliant, the chief of emergency medicine at Paoli Hospital, called “selfless” and a great way to show appreciation for staff who couldn’t be with their families on Christmas Day.

The Bottos family showed up at the hospital late on Christmas afternoon with 25 freshly baked pies to feed the more than two dozen staffers caring for 70 patients packed in the 30-bed emergency room.

Assembling and baking the pizzas was a family endeavor that included the couple’s children, ages 11 and 13, and relatives visiting from Greece. Bottos told Patch he and his wife are teaching their children about giving back to the community.

“We want to teach them that the holiday is not all about getting gifts,” he said. “It’s about sharing with others. They know it’s for a good cause.”

“It feels good to know you did something to help others,” Christos, the 11-year-old, chimed in. “They (the hospital staff) were working all day.” Read more below:

• Kids Learn Kindness Making Pizzas For Hospital Staff

Some young kids in Guilford, Connecticut, even found a way to raise money for their preschool by being kind.

The 34 preschoolers, who range in age from 2 to 5, committed to performing 72 acts of kindness. Among them: the students organized a toy drive, picked up trash in their neighborhoods and delivered grocery items to local food banks. Read more below:

• Grateful Kids’ Random Acts Of Kindness Raise Money

In addition to those ideas from the Connecticut kids and others, here are a dozen more ways to show kindness:

1. Ask your neighbor if there’s anything you can do for them — for example, walk the dog, take care of a household or outdoor chore, or run an errand.

2. Send a letter to a mentor or someone who influenced you and tell them how they contributed to the person you are today.

3. Fill a backpack you’re no longer using with gloves, hats, toiletries and other items and give it to a homeless person, or leave it at some location you know a homeless person might find it.

4. Leave packages of diapers in public restrooms with changing tables.

5. Make a donation, no matter how small, to a nonprofit organization in your town.

6. Leave money at the vending machines.

7. Tip your server or barista more than you normally would. Note on the receipt you’re doing it as part of Random Acts of Kindness Day.

8. Leave uplifting messages on sticky notes on restroom mirrors, or tuck them inside library books you’re returning.

9. If you’re waiting in a drive-through lane, pay for the order of the car behind you. If you’re dining in, pay for someone else’s meal.

10. Take a bouquet of flowers or a basket of fruit to an elderly neighbor who lives alone.

11. Tell the clerk or server who is waiting on you what a great job they’re doing, or compliment them in some other way.

12. Let someone go ahead of you in the grocery store line.

How Did All This Get Started?

The kindness movement was born in 1982 when Berkeley, California, writer and activist Anne Herbert published “Practice Random acts of Kindness and Acts of Senseless Beauty” in CoEvolution Quarterly, a small circulation magazine with an ecological, post-60s bent that covered a diversity of viewpoints and topics.

Almost a decade later, in 1991, a San Francisco woman saw the phrase scrawled on the face of a warehouse in her neighborhood. She told her husband, a teacher, about it, and he shared the message with his students, one of them the daughter of a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, who spread it even further with reprints in other publications.

In 1993, the editors of Conari Press published “Random Acts of Kindness,” a book that shared stories of people who have gone out of their way to brighten someone else’s day. In 1995, the small Berkeley publishing house created the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and the first-ever Random Acts of Kindness Day.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has a slew of resources to make kindness a way of life one kind moment at a time, including in the home, workplace and schools.