Your chance to vote for a dream

I've always loved a 'do-er'. People who get in and get on with things. Lots of people talk about stuff. About writing a book, or building a house, or saving the world. And then there are the people who just, well, do it.

I met Cate Bolt through Twitter, via a mutual industry contact. Cate is a do-er. She's also opinionated and forthright and no-nonsense. She tweets A LOT. Because she's there to raise money for a cause that means a lot to her. Cate doesn't just talk about how bad things are, or how she wishes things were different. She actively tries to make the world a better place.

Cate's come up against a fair bit of adversity in her life. It's her story, so if you want to know more, you should check out her blog. Suffice to say that she advocates for the homeless and any other number of voiceless people in this country. She has nine children. I know. Every time I complain about some aspect of parenting, she tells me that it will be fixed in one fell swoop by simply having more children. Worried about how they'll grow up? Have more children. Anxious about bullying? Have more children. Bored? Have more children. You can see how it goes.

She doesn't ask for help much. She'll sell you chocolate in a second to support her causes (and you should buy some because it's Fair Trade and therefore Guilt-Free Chocolate), but she won't ask for help. Unfortunately, she needs it now. She has a dream and SunSuper is offering grants that would make her dream so much easier for her to achieve. She wants to save orphaned children in Indonesia, and through education, help make that part of the world a better place. She has worked hard to raise the money for the orphanage and education programs, and the grant would help immensely with ongoing costs.

I'm asking for help for her. Please go here and vote for her dream. It's a one-minute process. You can read more about her story and her dream, vote (via a simple, non-scary log-in), and voila! that's it. It would help her out immensely if she won that money. It's a small kindness to help her with her much larger kindness picture. And you don't even have to have more children to solve the problem.

[image: MiguelRockstar/Tumblr]

A random post about kindness

My week of mindless activity continues, which means that my week of random thought also goes along its merry way. Today I was gnawing over the idea of Kindness.

Actually, scratch that. I began with Kindness and then segued briefly into why (or why not) women change their names when they get married. I brought that segue home with me, posted a question on Facebook/Twitter about it and watched the whole thing ignite. Answers were fairly evenly divided into the Ayes and the Nos, the hyphenated and the not, those with messy Medicare cards and those with a shared family name. I was left thinking 'now why didn't I write a blog post about that?'.

Moral to the story? Save your big questions for bigger forums.

Anyhoo, back to Kindness.

I read this post on Mamma Mia last week, about how kind words from a stranger can turn someone's day around. "Awww," I thought. I've long thought that kindness is an underrated human trait. Then, on ABC-TV's The Gruen Transfer last night, there was discussion of Kindness as a trend.

Advertisers are using social media to bestow 'random acts of kindness' (RAKs) upon people - usually people with large numbers of followers on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, people whom the advertiser thinks may be of some use in publicising said RAKs (and thus the advertiser) to their social networks. Call me cynical, but I think they need to come up with a new name. PMAM or Pre-Meditated Acts of Marketing comes to mind.

This idea of Kindness as a phenomenon, something people are talking about, interests me. Is it so rare in our world now that we have to broadcast it when someone is kind to us? It's not a new idea. Back in the 1970s, on those long family holidays in the back of the Kingswood Station Wagon, my sisters and I (the TICH was yet to join the Von Tait Family Singers) used to sing a song called 'Try A Little Kindness'. Heaven knows where we learnt it, or who sang it (I could Google it I know, but that would ruin the mystique), but I suspect it was a country singer of some description. It basically talked about how a random act of kindness would not only change someone else's day, but your own.

So now I'm wondering (you know me, always wondering). Have you ever been on the end of a random act of kindness? How did it make you feel? Or perhaps you were the purveyor of said kindness? Was it a spontaneous thing or did you specifically set out to be kind? If you set out to be kind, does that somehow add selfishness to the kindness mix?

Always with the big questions.