We were honoured to be a part of the Launch of Kindness Week 2017, which took place on Friday, February 17 at Accora Village. This was a very exciting Launch, as this year marked the 10th Anniversary of Kindness Week.
World-Changing Kids had two important tasks at the Launch – we completed a Kindness Painting with all the amazing kids and some awesome adults and we added signatures to our Kindness Petition.
Our Kindness Paintings always have the beautiful words “We Are All Flowers From The Same Garden” and show the world that we belong to each other. We prepped this painting at home so that when we brought it to the Launch, every artist could add their own flower.
On the day of the Launch, I took my crew of five World-Changing Kids with me. They helped me carry our mobile painting studio on this lovely sunny day!
We met up with a few more World-Changing Kids friends at the Launch. They were all ready to get to painting after the official program.
This is a photo my six year old took of Rabbi Bulka and Peter Joynt during the program, with two of our friends from Family Harmonies Familiales in the foreground, before Peter went up to perform.
The kids LOVED Peter Joynt’s performance. Peter does a fantastic presentation about kindness, gratitude and being proud of who you are. Then he performed his awesome Capcity (Ottawa song).
After the formal program, we had the two older kids walk our Kindness Petition around the room for signatures. A bit of background on our Kindness Petition:
In order to have a concrete action we can take to show the world that we believe people from all religions, cultures and races are welcome in our communities and that we all belong to each other, we have created a Kindness Petition to be read in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. This petition calls on all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stand up and speak out against all forms of hate and discrimination and to stand together in love and kindness. With our signatures, we will be adding power and strength to these words.
For more information on this Kindness Petition, as well as instructions for downloading it for signatures, click here.
We gave all the signed pages to John Fraser, MPP for Ottawa South, so that he could bring them to be read at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on Tuesday, February 21.
Then we got to work on our Kindness Painting. We had 9 children from the Accora Centre’s after school program – who are now new friends of World-Changing Kids – add a flower, and 9 children who have been friends of World-Changing Kids from the beginning add a flower.
Then we had some awesome adults paint a flower too!
Here we have Dan Greenberg adding a green tulip.
And Rabbi Bulka and Angèle Jodouin, Co-Founder of Family Harmonie Familiales, adding their flowers.
We then gifted this beautiful painting to Accora Village to thank them for their support of Kindness Week. I hope to receive a photo of the painting hanging up in Accora Village soon. I will post it when I do receive it!
Completing Acts of Kindness with your children shows them that the adults in their lives value kindness and will impress upon them the importance of being a kind, engaged member of your community. They will start to look for more ways to be kind because they know that it is what you do as a family. And you will notice that by completing Acts of Kindness in your neighbourhood, you will start to know more of your neighbours. You will build a friendly community while also helping your children strengthen their kindness, empathy and compassion muscles.
For 75 more Acts of Kindness that you can do in your community, check out our book “Plant a Garden of Kindness, A Child’s Guide to Filling a Year with Weekly Acts of Kindness”. You can find more information on our book at the “Our Book” tab above.