Radical Acts of Kindness – W2D1 by Aubrie

Sep 22, 2015

First day of new challenges in week two, with a completely new group!

Today’s challenge entailed doing four radical acts of kindness, two on our own and two as a group. One as a group must be completed for recognition and one anonymous Spencer, Dave, Joe, Kieran, Aubrie, and Ari as facilitator started off the day on the trampoline with the first of many brainstorming sessions. We decided we would assess the town and get a feel for where we could be the most helpful.

We hit the town, a little confused as to where to head first. The elementary school and surrounding suburban neighborhood would be a good place to start. The town was looking a little deserted at first glance, and no one seemed outwardly in need of any assistance. So, we changed our attack strategy. Instead of looking for opportunities to be helpful, we wanted to create something for the town that would last. We decided to use a little bookshelf, collect a plethora of old books from some free-piles and people around the town, and create a miniature free library for anyone who wanted to grab or drop some literature.

After asking multiple businesses around Paonia if they wanted to host this mini library, we found a perfect match on the curb outside “The Diner.” We still had three more acts of kindness to complete, one more as a group and two alone. We had an essential lunch and ice cream break. We thought we would first complete the second group act, then divide and conquer.

We offered our help in just about any way in any place, including an elementary school, a senior center, an art collective, and at least ten instances of yard work. Then, with almost all our time taken up, we arrived at a grand master plan of super duper kindness. We came to the conclusion that we must clean out the composting toilet of the Tech Barn. Though the toilets ended up not actually need any cleaning, we managed to vacuum up large amount of flies and many a dust bunny. In the end, though we were unsatisfied with the number of acts actually accomplished, we were proud of our tiny library, and the effort we had put in.

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