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.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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.

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!

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
The community must raise the $120,000 needed to fund the scholarship for the first two years. After that, it will be able to collect a portion of the state education property tax revenue that residents and businesses pay. It also plans to look for outside funding.

“Baldwin doesn’t have a multimillionaire who can do this with writing just one check, or at least they haven’t found that person,” said Chuck Wilbur, special education adviser to Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Instead, the people and businesses in Baldwin have pumped in nearly $100,000 toward the project so far, including $17,000 pledged at school employees’ meetings just this week.

“We’ve had an outpouring of support from businesses and private individuals and graduates,” Howes said.

Few communities need the boost for students as much as Baldwin, where the town’s largest employer, a privately owned prison, shut down in 2005 after the state ended its contract there. Lake County’s unemployment rate is 18.7 percent, higher even than the overall state rate of 15 percent.

The area, about 30 miles east of Lake Michigan, was a stop on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s and is home to Idlewild, a former haven for black entertainment during the segregation era.

“We’re filled with lakes and rivers and streams and state forests and national forests,” Howes said, noting the county fills up on weekends with 35,000 summer residents but doesn’t have a single stoplight. “And yet the community of Baldwin, from a profile perspective, looks like a lot of inner cities.”

Generations of poverty
Fifty percent of the Baldwin school district’s students are white, 42 black and 8 percent Hispanic. Ninety-two percent its 560 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and generations of poverty stretch across ethnic lines.

About half of Baldwin High School graduates each year go on to attend community college or a university, Howes said, a percentage he thinks will shoot up with the scholarship. Graduates can qualify for up to $5,000 a year for four years to help pay tuition as long as they maintain a 2.0 grade point average in college and carry a full course load. Part-time students can get smaller grants.

Residency is a requirement to get the grant. Students who have attended school in the district for four years can get the full amount. Those who have attended school for three years can get 75 percent of the grant, while those there two years can get 50 percent and those there just one year, a quarter.

Scholarships such as the Michigan Promise Scholarship — currently in limbo as state budget talks drag on — and federal Pell grants would be counted toward tuition first, with the Baldwin Promise scholarship filling in what’s needed up to $5,000 a year.

The prison owners, GEO Group Inc. of Florida, are finishing up a $60 million expansion and hope to reopen the North Lake Correctional Facility soon, offering jobs paying at least $40,000 annually and giving those who might be lured by the Baldwin Promise a place to work, Howes said.

“It’s like the stars are aligning for Baldwin,” he added. “There’s a lot of really good news in a kind of glum economic climate in this tiny little rural place out in the middle of nowhere.”

This is the coolest story and one that warrants 5 stars. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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.
4. Genesis 24:14
May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’-let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
5. Genesis 24:27
saying, “Praise be to the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the LORD has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives.”
6. Genesis 24:49
Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn.”
7. Genesis 32:10
I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups.
8. Genesis 39:21
the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
9. Genesis 40:14
But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison.
10. Genesis 47:29
When the time drew near for Israel to die, he called for his son Joseph and said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt,
11. Joshua 2:12
Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign
12. Judges 8:35
They also failed to show kindness to the family of Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) for all the good things he had done for them.
13. Judges 21:22
When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war, and you are innocent, since you did not give your daughters to them.’ ”
14. Ruth 1:8
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
15. Ruth 2:20
“The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers.”
16. Ruth 3:10
“The LORD bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor.
17. 1 Samuel 15:6
Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.
18. 1 Samuel 20:8
As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the LORD. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?”
19. 1 Samuel 20:14
But show me unfailing kindness like that of the LORD as long as I live, so that I may not be killed,
20. 1 Samuel 20:15
and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the LORD has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”
21. 2 Samuel 2:5
he sent messengers to the men of Jabesh Gilead to say to them, “The LORD bless you for showing this kindness to Saul your master by burying him.
22. 2 Samuel 2:6
May the LORD now show you kindness and faithfulness, and I too will show you the same favor because you have done this.
23. 2 Samuel 9:1
[ David and Mephibosheth ] David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”
24. 2 Samuel 9:3
The king asked, “Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?” Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in both feet.”
25. 2 Samuel 9:7
“Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

The above list only a few of the many kindness references from the bible. Some text courtesy of BibleGateway.com

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.

He also hands out bracelets to the children, with “kindness” written in nine different languages. The children start each day with the bracelet on their left, wrist, and move it to their right, upon an act of kindness.

Bullies, he says, have lost touch with their heart, and pick on people with qualities they have lost touch with in themselves, he says.

Because their victims don’t understand this, they take it personally, he said, but the bully is actually jealous.

“If kids see that they are being bullied because of something lacking in the bully, not because something is wrong with them (the victim), it is really empowering.”

As a UBC student, Tully says, he was “a jock,” by all appearances outgoing and popular, yet with many problems. He was drinking too much and was suicidal when he decided in 1970 to cycle around North America.

He describes that 1970 tour not as a 10,000-mile trip, but a 12-inch journey, “from my head to my heart, which included Washington D.C., the southern states, and Mexico.

“I reconnected with my heart and I am living a life of purpose.”

Tully is the first to admit he is not perfect.

“I am not always kind. We all falter, but it is important to get back up and keep trying.”

He writes inspirational books, the Reflections series, and appears as a keynote inspirational speaker while living in Vancouver.

He is the co-founder of the Kindness Foundation of Canada, and in 2000 he again set off by bike to take his message to across Canada and the U.S. hitting New Brunswick, New York, Miami, the southern States and the West Coast.

On this trip, Tully is pulling a 70-pound trailer behind his bicycle, and had just travelled up the West Coast, through “freezing snowstorms and unbelievable winds,” taking a ferry to Victoria from Washington, before travelling through Vancouver to Langley on his way to Kamloops.

He will return to Vancouver on May 3.

“It has been amazing. I come in and offer (a presentation) and a lot of schools have invited me in.”

At cycleitforward.org, people can follow Tully’s daily journey.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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).