Our summer intern, Christian Varty, took on the job of delivering a random act of kindness for September (although he delivered it in August since he headed back to school a few days ago). His random act of kindness report is below. – Ruth
One of the benefits of doing good things is how it can inspire others and create more good things. This is what happened to me when I said I would deliver an AHA Random Act of Kindness.
Every year, our local Marketplace IGA hosts a family outdoor movie event. They project a movie and have snacks for sale. This year, the movie had to be postponed due to dodgy weather. This meant that in the back room of the store, we had giant 10lb bags of popcorn. I was asked if I wanted to buy one of these bags for $10. Of course I said yes – who wouldn’t want that much popcorn? It wasn’t until later on that I got the idea of buying more popcorn, bagging it and giving it away to people passing by.
I asked the store owner if I would be able to do this – paying for the popcorn with the money provided by AHA. Not only did he let me set up a table in front of the store to give away the popcorn, but he also said that we could have it for free instead of paying for it.
This meant that I was able to deliver on my AHA Random Act of Kindness and I was also able to donate the money I would have used to pay for the popcorn to Kid Sport. Double good deed!
I arrived at around 9:30 a.m. and set up a folding table outside. My friend (who gladly accepted my request to join me) and I slapped on our black latex gloves and started packing bags of popcorn. Of course, we picked the windiest day of the week to do this – and our popcorn bags kept falling over and blowing around so that we had to chase them! Eventually, we got the idea of putting the bags into a box to avoid the wind.
It was slow at first; our “FREE Popcorn” sign didn’t draw too much attention. Finally, people came over, asking what we were doing and why. We tried to explain it as best we could, but some people just didn’t understand our mission. Many people wanted to give us money, which we refused. We stayed all day – until 4 o’clock – and shared around 20lbs of popcorn with people. It was a great day!