Week Eight: Snow Removal from a Neighbour’s Car’s Windshield.

On my way to work the other day, I noticed that there was only one car parked on my street. I also noticed that this said car was covered in a bit of powder from the light snowfall that occurred the night before. I thought a nice gesture to do would be to remove that snow from the windshield and the hood to save the car owner a couple of minutes from their daily routine that morning. After making sure that car was not equipped with an alarm, I wiped down whatever snow I saw on the car. I didn’t leave a note or anything, but I’m hoping that my neighbour was pleasantly surprised by this simple act of kindness. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

G.

Week Seven: Clothing Collection from Friends for Donation Drop-Off. (#1)

Cottage weekend was coming up and 10 friends were attending. Samuel, one friend who unfortunately could not attend, suggested to ask everyone to bring something that could possibly be donated to people in need. I thought this was an amazing idea since it would be a great way to collect more items. Mo’ people, mo’ stuff, right? So I asked them to bring a couple of old articles of clothing that was taking up valuable space in their closets. (Nothing too big because everyone already had their hands and trunks full of stuff for the weekend.) It was also a great way to encourage them to start early on their Spring cleaning. Win-win situation, I thought! As expected, the group responded well to this idea. And then some. A few said that they actually had big bags of clothes to get rid of, so I suggested to wait until the following week to try to coordinate something and make one big trip to a donation centre instead. I reached out to another good friend of mine, Mathieu, who has a car (and a really big heart), to ask if he could help me bring everything to the Mission. He immediately agreed. I picked the Ottawa Mission as the designated drop-off centre as I wanted to make sure that the clothes would be put to good use, as opposed to being resold or thrown away. A couple of days after cottage weekend, the clothes were donated and everyone was left feeling lighter in clothes and good about their deed. I was happy to have acted as the bridge between the two. 

Thanks for the suggestion Sam!

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

What was even more impressive was the response I received post-posting this picture on Instagram and Facebook. A great number of people came up to me and said that they also had things to donate. As a result, I decided that it would be worth organizing a second clothing collection in the next little while. I will be coordinating that soon, so I will keep everyone posted. It’s great how word gets around so quickly!

G.

Week Six: Homemade Card for a Bedridden All-Star Volunteer.

At work we have had the pleasure to get to know this wonderful and high-spirited lady who dedicates a lot of her time towards our music festival organization. If we need something to get done, we know that we can always rely on her to get it done quickly and with extreme precision. On top of being our right arm for all of our events, her marvelous personality and sharp humour always makes her a very pleasant person to be around.

A few months ago, we found out that she was to undergo a serious surgery in February, which would confine her to a bed for several months. The team agreed that sending her a care package to which we would all contribute would be a nice gesture to do to let her know that we are thinking about her. As she had made a homemade card and baked goodies for us for Christmas, I thought that it was appropriate for me to make a card for her in return. I decided to have fun with it and try something new. I had never done watercolour before and thanks to my wonderful roommate who had the patience to guide me through the process, I was able to come up with a somewhat decent design. The bike symbolizes not only her love of cycling, but also the determination and strength (both essential when biking) that will help her get back on the road to recovery. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

(I may or may not have used the cat as a model.)

Again, by being involved with Katimavik in the past, I can fully understand the positive impact of volunteer work in the community. It’s important to underline the work that volunteers do and make them realize that what they accomplish does not go unnoticed as they are often the backbone of organizations, especially for music festivals. So making this card was the least I could do to thank her for her help.

G.

Week Five: Scholarship Reference Letter for a Former Katimavik Volunteer.

10 o’clock at night. Wednesday the 30^th.

I get a Facebook message from an old Katimavik volunteer. She explains that she is in the process of applying for the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award Program Scholarship. “Awesome! Good for you,” I think. “The deadline is Friday,” she continues, “so I would need it to be sent Xpresspost by tomorrow morning…” It was evident to me that she was in full panic mode. She gives her most sincere apologies for springing this on me on the very last minute and offers to repay me for the cost of the shipping. “Why not?” I think, “Seems like she could really benefit from this scholarship.” So I put my personal work load aside and start writing away. Next thing I know, it was 1 o’clock in the morning and my eyes were getting a tad weary. I had to finish it that night since I had to go in work the next morning for 9am. “Good thing I work close to a Post Office,” I thought. So I continue writing and fine tuning and at 2am, I was done. I decide to email it to myself so I could review it one last time at work with a refreshed mind and pair of eyes before sending it off. 12:30pm the next day, the Xpresspost letter was in the mailbox. I receive a message on Friday saying that she had received it. The deed was done!    

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

This is the second endorsement that I gave out to my good ol’ former Katimavikers. I received a phone call about three weeks ago from an employer wanting to do a reference check for another one of my volunteers. Not too long after, I received a message from her saying that she got the job for which she had applied. Now here’s to hoping that everything will work out for this little bird too.

Glad to see that Competency 8 is being fulfilled! 

(Katimavik peeps will get this...)

Thoughts on the project so far

I've been feeling pretty good about where the project has been heading lately and the surprising amount of attention that it's been getting! 

• A francophone radio show, Vaguefm, from the Penetanguishene area has talked about it on air last Wednesday (which yes, has made my mom pretty proud); 
• The kind folks from Pay It Forward Saint John, who are the people that have inspired me to do this project in the first place, have been tweeting away about it and have distributed it by email in their large networks; 
• The traffic on the blog has been increasing exponentially, attracting people from the US, Germany, France, the UK, Argentina, Nigeria and Singapore; 
• Lastly, I’ve been getting some random amazing feedback from acquaintances and from people that I have never met before. 

All of this to me translates to potentially having had a small impact in some people’s lives and I’m hoping that it has encouraged them to do a couple of random acts of kindness themselves.   

G.

Week Four: Wool Socks for a Homeless Person.

As I was coming back from work the other day in -25^oC weather, I noticed a homeless and also sockless man walking in front of me. I felt so bad for him and his lack of socks - so much that I was contemplating of taking off my own feet warming gear and handing it to him. I didn't, however, it did spark an idea for my fourth week gesture. The next day, I decided to change my usual morning trek to work in order to pass in front of the Ottawa Mission. I brought along a pair of warm wool socks because I figured that someone might put them to good use, especially since we were expecting even colder weather later on in the week. I approached an older gentleman who seemed to be chilly in front of the Mission and I asked if he was interested in accepting this small gift. The man looked at me for a moment, with kindness in his eyes, and said "Oh yes please", followed by many thank yous. I asked how his day was going so far and he responded: “It just got that much better.” Seeing the gratitude that this man was expressing had made my day that much better in return.

*Side note - a local radio station from the County of Simcoe will be talking about my project on air at 6pm on Wednesday, January 30th! A friend from my hometown, who is now a radio host for the francophone station Vague FM 88.1, was following me on Twitter and noticed what I was up to. She sent me a message asking if she could talk about it on her show because she thought that it was such a neat concept and felt like sharing it. Listen to the coverage here: http://vaguefm.ca/lecteur/.  

This is truly amazing. I feel good about this thing. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

G.

Week Three: Food Delivery for a Sick Friend of a Friend.

This week’s adventure is a tad different than the last two. Last Thursday, an out-of-town friend reached out to me and asked if I could spare her a favour. Ashly, a lovely mademoiselle whom I had the pleasure meeting during my student association years at the University of Ottawa, sent a distressed Facebook message to some specially chosen pals. In a nutshell, the message read that one of her dear friends in Ottawa became very ill during the Holidays and was rushed to hospital where he had to stay for 2 weeks. Now I won’t share all of his medical details, as it is not my place to do so but to my knowledge, her friend was quite sick. 

She mentioned that some of his loved ones did take some time off work to be there in the hospital with him, but now that he's returned home for a mandatory 1 month rest, they unfortunately can't be by his side anymore. So Ashly, being the wonderful person that she is, decided to send a message to some people she knew in Ottawa to drop in and check up on her friend and perhaps bring him some tasty dishes to help the poor lad out. I agreed to to her request without hesitation. I thought that this would be a great thing to do for Ashly as I knew that she was probably heartbroken about the fact that she couldn't be there herself to look after him. So I got cooking and decided to make vegetable lasagna. (Thanks to my friend Emilie for the recipe! I altered it a bit by using spaghetti squash and zucchini instead of eggplant, but it was still very tasty!) 

When I made my way to the Glebe area last night to render the meal, I was greeted at the door by a very grateful young gentleman. He took the time to explain to me what had happened, despite the number of times that he had to repeat it to every other goody-bearing friend of Ashly's. He said that as he is often very tired and weak, which makes it difficult for him to cook. He expressed his deepest gratitude and appreciated the effort and time that I dedicated to prepare something for him. This genuine heartfelt thank you was all very touching and moving. 

On my walk back home, after saying goodbye, I felt myself light up inside. As this was the first time that I actually witnessed a reaction, I realized how much of an impact that a simple gesture can really have on someone. I was also glad that I was able to reignite a bit of this sense of community that our younger generations seemed to have lost with the years. As everything seems to be getting more and more impersonal these days, it felt good to resort back to good ol’ human interactions. Maybe it is just my small-town mentality making its way to the surface here, but nonetheless, it never hurts to be kind to your neighbours.

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

This is how I feel at the moment.
G.

Week Two: Ticketing by Mail.

For week numéro deux, I wanted to exploit this “random act of kindness” concept. At work, since we have recently been organizing events with the Museum of Nature, they have been very generous in return. As a way of thanking us for doing business with them, they have been offering a lot of free admission tickets for some of their upcoming events. I had received tickets for their Nature Unleashed exhibition back in October but I never had the chance to actually go check it out. So I decided to share the love with some random person whose name was picked by my hovering finger after opening the phonebook instead. I’m a mail person. I always love to send things by mail to my friends and family, internationally or not, because I find that it means so much more than just sending a letter or an item. To me, it represents dedication and time spent writing and reflecting on the relationship you hold with this person. In this case, it was a slightly different scenario, but I thought it would add a personal touch that someone might appreciate. The idea was to encourage the recipient to create a new experience with someone they like spending time with; an experience that would possibly not have happened were she/he would not have been given that extra push. Here's a chance for someone to be a tourist in their own city. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

(And for those of you who are wondering; no, I did not add a return address for the simple fact that I didn’t want in any way make the person feel obliged to send anything back. I felt like it would have defeated the whole purpose of the gesture.)

I hope Anonymous will enjoy the exhibition! 

G.