It’s been more than 20 years since Colleen Ring and Debbie Riopel first brought Random Acts of Kindness Week to the country through St. Albert, the first city in Canada to mark its importance. Back in 1995, then-mayor Anita Ratchinsky gave the official proclamation to the American-started initiative to counter a growing concern about random acts of violence.
Now Ring, a former teacher currently sitting on the board of the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace, is reflecting on two decades of random kindness and the need to continue fighting the goodness fight.
“I think it’s something that just appeals to people,” she began.
“There were some people who were skeptical or cynical about it: ‘Why do we need a week? Why is it a week? What’s the point?’ I had a seven-year-old student who said that the week really gives us a chance to really think about practising kindness and if we practise it enough it will become a real habit.”
One of the ways that she likes to offer kindness is to bring home baked treats to first responders at police stations and fire stations along with thank you cards. She doesn’t generally plan such offerings though. It’s called “Random Acts” for a reason, she explained, so the best way to celebrate is to offer kindness as the spirit moves you and as opportunities present themselves. Let somebody merge into your lane ahead of you or offer someone with a baby take your spot in the line at the grocery store, she suggested.
“Those kinds of things, I think, are what really make up the fabric of society where kindness is the norm.”
She said that kindness, even a small act of kindness, could have a ripple effect that will influence others to offer their own kindness. This, she elaborated, can happen in much the same way as those stories of people paying it forward at a fast food coffee shop drive-thru where people keep buying coffee for the person in line behind them. Even that one first act doesn’t need to be a grand gesture in order to have a grand and lasting impact.
To illustrate that point, she recalled a story from the John Humphrey Centre’s Global Youth Assembly five years ago. She had a number of conversations with a young woman who had immigrated to Canada. The woman related to Ring how she was experiencing trouble acclimatizing to the culture but when Random Acts of Kindness Week happened at her school, somehow the social boundaries fell and her world changed.
“The things that the teacher had happening in the class that week created a framework that allowed the other kids to connect with me like they never had. From that point, I felt I had been accepted and that I belonged. I felt like if that was the only thing that ever happens that we had done in this initiative, that would be enough!”
Officially, Random Acts of Kindness Week runs from Feb. 14 to 20. Ring suggested that it should happen every week of the year.
