A Better World

 Active Kind Teens Nurturing Our World

When I was in the third grade, my elementary school had an after school program titled: A.K.T.N.O.W. which stood for Active Kind Teens Nurturing Our World. At first, I was the only participant from my school. Two high school students were the program directors and we came up with different random acts of kindness each week. One act of kindness I remember well was a trip to the local high school. Under the guidance of my high school leaders, I hand wrote hundreds of notes that said "Have a Good Day! :)" and taped them to pieces of gum. Then my high school leaders and I walked to the nearby school and slipped each note into each locker for the high school to open the next day. I remember feeling so excited that those students would open their lockers the next day and have a mini Christmas-like experience.

The year went on, and  we continued to do activities such as picking up trash, collecting food and gifts for families we "adopted" throughout the year, cleaning up the school, and leaving more surprise gifts and notes. By the end of the year, four other students had joined and we even made it into the local newspaper. I continued to participate in the program until I was in fifth grade, and by that time, nearly fifty students had joined the program.

We had a positive impact on the community and since then, I have done as many random kind things as possible. I open doors for people, smile at srangers (they say a smile is contagious), and when I can afford it, I leave money with the barista at the coffee shop with instructions to use it to pay for the order of someone who is having an especially poor day.

I now have a goal to get as many people involved with a "secret" mission, Operation: A Better World.

Each week, I will post random acts of kindness and ask each of my readers to participate. My goal is to eventually get people together to perform acts of kindness in the community. I believe that kindness is contagious and I hope to infect as many people as possible. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stay tuned for acts of kindness large and small. 

Thank you!