A Year of Kindness

A movement by The Teenager Today, Rotary and Rotaract Clubs of Mumbai Bravehearts, Kindness Unlimited and the World Kindness Movement

The world has seen nearly two years of uncertainty, hardships, untold misery and grievous loss as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, even through this trying period, what has shone through and endured have been the stories of indomitable courage, compassion and humanity — not only from the medical fraternity and the frontline workers to whom we owe so much, but from the common man on the street, our friends, our relatives, our neighbours and even complete strangers.

The Year of Kindness is an attempt to highlight these acts of kindness which we keep performing on a regular basis in our lives, and even more so in troubled times, and create a movement wherein every such act gets felicitated and encouraged in such a way that ‘being kind’ and ‘doing good’ becomes a habit and a way of life for every human being on the planet.

A Year of Kindness will roll out from 1 March 2022, exactly two years after the first official declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, and run through 28 February 2023, in its first phase.

The initiators and drivers of this project are the Rotary and Rotaractor Clubs of Mumbai Bravehearts, Kindness Unlimited, the World Kindness Movement and The Teenager Today. Through its tenure, more organizations and individuals, across India and the world, will be encouraged to join the movement.

How will this work?

♥ All founder organizations, including the readers of The Teenager Today, will reach out to individuals and organizations in their network to participate.

♥ The basic idea is for everybody to do at least one kind act a day — this could be an act of kindness to oneself, to others (friends, family, strangers), to animals and birds or even to the environment.

♥ The project will be supported by an app and a web-based programme, developed by our technology partner, Inventeam, which will be used to facilitate and track every act of kindness.

♥ Every participant will need to record her/his act of kindness on the app giving details of the person the act has been done to and the story behind it.

♥ The spread of the idea will be based on the ‘Pay It Forward’ principle — instead of the recipient of the kind act saying “thank you” and moving on or doing something good in return to the initiator of the kind act, s/he will carry on the chain by doing an act of kindness to another person.

♥ The app will gently trigger the recipient of the kind act to ‘pay it forward’ and thus continue the chain.

♥ The app will not only record these acts of kindness but also track the spread of the same in terms of geography as well as timelines.

♥ The Teenager Today will feature each month the initiatives which will cover the latest statistics, inspiring stories of kindness coming in through the app as well as updating readers on all the partner organizations that have come in through the month. This will also be done in greater depth on the website and social media channels of the magazine as also the other founding organizations.

♥ The initiative is open to individuals as well as organizations to participate in.

♥ No act of kindness will be deemed too small or insignificant. All participants are free to record as many acts of kindness as possible at whatever frequency. Organizations and companies are free to participate as a unit as well.

♥ A number of recognitions are being planned for star individual performers, kindest organization, longest and broadest chains, individuals inviting the highest number of participants to join in and many other.

♥ The campaign will kick off in March with the launch of the app. Please follow updates on the website and social media channels of The Teenager Today. Immediately after the app goes live, each one of you can register on the same and start recording your acts of kindness and share this with your contact sphere across the world. With all our efforts, this campaign can go viral globally in no time!

We are setting out on a historic mission here — a mission to create a kinder world that will be beneficial to every living and non-living being on this planet! Be an Ambassador of Kindness this year!