Kindness In Motion

Gift of Life

There are different types of neighbours.

There are neighbours who smile and wave at each other, maybe get together for the occasional barbecue or shovel each other’s driveway.

There are neighbours who never speak and secretly wish the other people would just move away.

And then there’s Tracey Louvros and Dave Kozoris, neighbours in Brocklehurst for the past eight years.

Dave needs a kidney.

Tracey is jumping through all the medical hoops she needs to so she can give Dave one of hers.

Why?

“Because he needs one,” Tracey says matter-of-factly.

Right now, Dave’s living without his kidneys, which were removed in February as a result of the polycystic kidney disease he had — essentially, his kidneys were filling up with grape-shaped growths, distending his stomach and shoving all his other organs into places they weren’t meant to be.

After the surgeons removed the two organs, they were weighed. One hit 20 pounds, the other was seven pounds.

Kidneys usually weigh not much more than four ounces.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Dave says. “It was hard to walk.”

Feed the Children

Kindness in Motion would like to highlight this program and its service. A little bit about Feed the Children and their Mission:

Feed The Children is a Christian, international, nonprofit relief organization with headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that delivers food, medicine, clothing and other necessities to individuals, children and families who lack these essentials due to famine, war, poverty, or natural disaster.

Please check it out and do your best to support this organization. www.feedthechildren.org

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Kindness can help stop poverty

This organization is worthy of the Kindness in Motion 5 star award. Kiva is a wonderful organization dedicated to helping the impoverished. Donors can help by providing a loan for as little as $25 to a needy individual in another part of the world. The power of micro-finance…it is an amazing story.

Check out the site, form a team and start making a difference! www.kiva.org

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Wake up to Hunger

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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Michigan town providing scholarships to all

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

Cycling for Kindness

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.

Child’s act of 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).

Helping Others

We might be different but we can still reach out and help each other in  a time of need.

Here is an act of kindness worth mentioning, Kamloops Alliance Church parishioners donated over 5000 lbs of Food at a ThanksGiving weekend service for the Kamloops Food Bank.

The following week Kamloops Rotary group collected another 20,000 lbs of Food for the Food Bank. With the food bank shelves looking pretty bare this latest infusion will help get them past the toughest part of the year.

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Mysterious ‘Gas Men’ dole out $100 at pumps

Conn. motorists get cash, card from unknown pair in green T-shirts, caps

Associated Press
PLAINVILLE, Conn. – They don’t climb tall buildings in a single bound, but the mysterious “Gas Men” are super heroes to some fed-up motorists.

The unknown duo were dressed in sunglasses, baseball caps, khakis and matching green golf shirts when they gave Gayle Kilburn a $100 bill on Thursday as she filled up her car at a Citgo in Plainville.

They also handed her a card that read “Re-Fueling Our Community” and was signed “The Gas Men.”

With fuel prices where they are today what a great sentiment or random act of kindness these Men performed.

The Kindness in Motion Team have awarded this story the prestigous 5 star rating.
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Class ring lost for 54 years returned to owner

Metal-detector hobbyist found trinket 12 years ago, then went sleuthing

Credit: Associated Press
LUDINGTON, Mich. – A woman who lost her class ring in Lake Michigan in 1954 has it back, thanks to a metal-detector hobbyist.

Robert Savage told the Ludington Daily News for a story Saturday that he found the ring about 12 years ago but only recently began looking for its owner.

He did a bit of detective work by looking at the initials and the year on the ring. He found a Ludington High yearbook for 1955 and found that Jan Pedersen was the only person in the class with the right initials.

Now Jan Zacharda, she says she had forgotten about the ring she lost at Ludington State Park. And she’s even more puzzled that Savage found it in a lake about a dozen miles away.

Zacharda now wears the ring on her index finger, where it fits better.

This is what Kindness in Motion is all about, going out of your way make someone else’s day. Kindness – Pass it On!
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