5 Acts Of Kindness That Restored Our Faith In Humanity

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World Kindness Day is next week, and to get you in the mood and share some warm fuzzy feelings, here are five acts of kindness that have restored our faith in humanity…

BIRTHDAY LOVE

When Ollie Jones, a young autistic boy from Exmouth, told his mum he was excited to open birthday cards from friends and family on his birthday, his mum had a few worries. She wasn’t sure how many cards he would receive, as Ollie didn’t have many friends. So his mum took to the internet and wrote a Facebook post seeing if anyone would want to send her son a card. Cut to his birthday and 20,000 cards, messages and presents from people all over the world were in Ollie’s hands! Now that’s a lot of birthday love right there…

#DOSOMETHINGFORNOTHING

One day, Josh Coombes, a hairdresser from London, was walking to his friend's house when he saw a homeless man he’d seen many times before in the same spot. Having given him food and money in the past, Josh thought he’d ask if the man wanted a haircut. With his scissors and hairdressing gear in his backpack, Josh got to work. And a couple of days later? A few of the man’s friends asked for haircuts too. Since then, Josh has set up the #dosomethingfornothing campaign to show what he was doing but also encourage other people to act in kindness for no return. He hopes that his work cutting hair will break the taboo surrounding homelessness, give people a sense of identity again, and show that being kind is easy. 

PAY IT FORWARD

A small but simple gesture changed Amana’s day. When queuing for a coffee before work, she went to pay and was told that the person in front of her had also paid for her drink. It made her so happy that she did the same for the person behind her, and so a chain of kindness was created. 

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Last Christmas, a man in St Helens had an unfortunate day, when his oven blew up, with his Christmas dinner still inside. Claire, a cafe owner, was walking down the street when she noticed the man outside his house in a lot of distress. She asked if there was anything he could do to help and told him to go back inside out of the cold and she'd come back with some food. After posting what happened on her cafe’s Facebook page, she was inundated with replies to help out, and people from across St Helens rallied together to donate food, a halogen oven, a toaster, and a microwave to ensure the man didn’t go hungry again. Amazing!

MAN’S BEST FRIEND

When Kieran, an ambulance care assistant, was dropping off a patient at A&E, he found that the man was incredibly worried about having to stay in hospital as there was no one to look after his little terrier, Daisy. After talking to the patient for a little longer, Kieran called his wife and within 20 minutes, she had packed the children into the car and came to the hospital to pick up the dog! Kieran and his family looked after Daisy for the whole time the patient was in hospital and gave her a good temporary home and lots of cuddles.  

We also reached out to you on Instagram recently to see what the kindness thing anyone has done for you is. Here are some of our favourites…

“Someone brought me food when I wasn’t able to!”

“My friends being supportive and distracting me from a bad break up”

“My friend helped me write my GCSE maths paper when I broke my fingers”

“They looked after me at school when I didn’t feel 100% and kept asking if I was okay”

“Someone paid for the bus for me”

“I went into a shop and bought some perfume and they gave me lots of free stuff too!”