For every pound you pledge to lose through June 30, 2010, the Pound For Pound Challenge will donate 14¢ to Feeding America® — enough to deliver one pound of groceries to a local food bank. $800,000 maximum donation.

Check it out here Wake Up To Hunger

Our hats are off to General Mills and NBC. This cause and effort is definitely worthy of our 5 Star Kindness Rating.

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As always, Rick publishes excellent articles and practical ways we can demonstrate love and kindness.

Love is an action
by Rick Warren

Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions.

1 John 3:18 (NLT)

Love is something you do. You show love by what you do, not just by what you feel.

Love is more than attraction and more than arousal. It’s also more than sentimentality, like so many of today’s songs suggest. By this standard, is love dead when the emotion is gone? No, not at all. Because love is an action; love is a behavior.

The world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige, and position. If you can demand service from others, you’ve arrived. In our self-serving culture with its me-first mentality, acting like a servant is not a popular concept.

Nothing can be more rewarding than helping others. There is something in the human spirit that lights up when we are able to do something kind for someone else.  Remember to smile while serving others!

We recently were made aware of an inexpensive but cool way to perform a random act of kindness. Visit small candy machines and fill the slots with quarters so when unsuspecting children visit the machine they will find them loaded and ready to go.

Talk about community, in Lansing, Michigan they have elevated this to a new level. A tiny rural school district where nine out of 10 students come from needy families is offering high school graduates $5,000 a year for four years to fulfill their college dreams.

Baldwin Superintendent Randy Howes will hold a ceremony on Tuesday to launch the program to 25 students set to graduate next spring. All students in Baldwin schools will be covered by the new scholarship offer of up to $20,000.

The community of just more than 1,000 people is the first in Michigan to follow the example of the highly popular Kalamazoo Promise, an anonymously funded scholarship that has attracted new residents to the city eager to get all or most of their children’s tuition paid at public universities or community colleges in Michigan.

Kalamazoo’s program has inspired at least 19 similar programs nationwide since its inception in November 2005, while more than 50 other communities are exploring the idea. Ten Michigan communities have gotten state approval this year to set up scholarship programs. But Baldwin’s is the only one ready to go as the new school year gets under way.

Community needs to raise $120,000
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Michigan town providing scholarships to all

Not sure if you have read this story online, however it touched me big time when I read it and wanted to post it here for all our readers.

The kind act ended two years of waiting on a national kidney waiting list

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The ultimate act of kindness occurred between neighbors. Two Kansas City women have lived next door to each other for 30 years. But Claudine Jackson and Jo Ann Walz really got to know each other after Walz donated her kidney last Thursday to Jackson.

The two had always been friendly, but have grown much closer over the past three years as Walz helped with car rides to dialysis treatments, doctor’s appointments and the grocery store.

The kind act ended two years of waiting on a national kidney waiting list.

Jackson moved onto Fuller Avenue in south Kansas City in 1977. Walz moved in next door about a year later in 1978.

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Kindness is an act that dates back thousands of years.

Here is some scripture Galatians 5:22-23. The NIV Bible lists the fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

1. Genesis 19:19
Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.
2. Genesis 21:23
Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants. Show to me and the country where you are living as an alien the same kindness I have shown to you.”
3. Genesis 24:12
Then he prayed, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham.
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Kindness dates back thousands of years

Author: Natasha Jones / Black Press

All the meanness in the world, from abuse, to bullying, to gang violence, can be attributed to people who “have lost touch with their heart.”

That’s the message of Brock Tully, a Vancouver writer and speaker whose has pedalled his message around North America not once, but three times.

“I really believe that the solution to all our challenges, gang violence, crystal meth, abuse and bullying of kids… is creating a culture of kindness.”

Tully, 62, is cycled through Surrey and Langley last Monday, on the last leg of his “Kindness, Cycle it Forward” tour, begun in Vancouver in September.

Along an 18,000-kilometre route that included Salt Lake City and Phoenix, Arizona, through the southern U.S. states and back up the west coast, he has arranged presentations to school children about bullying and kindness.

“It is kind of an anti-bullying presentation, that is inspiring, but it focuses on a solution, which is kindness.”

He makes his talks interesting and instructive, through multi-media presentations and juggling acts, and he aims at making children understand why bullying happens, and how to stop it, he said.
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Cycling for Kindness

This is a pretty cool story about a youngster that makes scarves and donates proceeds to World Vision and other charities to help under privileged kids. www.scarfaid.com is the website and sometimes our children can best demonstrate on how to perform acts of kindness and place focus on what is truly important in life and that is helping others.

Here is an excerpt from World Vision that Gina at ScarfAid wanted to share with our team:

Dear Gina,

Thank you for your life-changing gift of 2 Hens and a Rooster from World Vision’s Gift Catalogue! Your gift will be a blessing to a child and family in need, and a truly meaningful way to celebrate the promise of hope and new life.

Thank you for giving the gift of hope to children and families in need around the world.

Sincerely,

Dave Toycen
President, World Vision Canada

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We also found this passage the kindness in motion team wanted to share with our readers:

“In response to all he has done for us, let us outdo each other in being helpful and kind to each other and in doing good” (Hebrews 10:24 TLB).