Week Thirteen: Professional Letter of Recommendation for a Friend.

This week's act was pretty personal as I felt the need to thank a really good friend of mine.

2012 was an irksome and what felt like a never ending job hunting year for me. Although I was aware that this is usually a pretty common situation for recent university graduates to be in, I felt a lot of anxiety, especially since the job market was a bit slow at that period.

However, all throughout this process, one of my friends, who is also an Employment Service Resource & Information Specialist, had been coaching me and pushing me in the right direction. She helped me with my resume, sent me job postings everyday from work and was just overall always very supportive. She had also gladly accepted to do a resume building workshop for one of my groups in my past job as a Project Leader for Katimavik. 

I decided to send an email to her supervisor this week to highlight all of the great work the she has done, not only for me, but for everyone else she has been lending her services to lately.

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

What goes around, comes around.

(AM I RIGHT, JT?)

G.

Week Twelve: Surprise Gifting for a Friend.

Lately, I found myself being surrounded by really good friends and appreciating every moment of it. Friends who put up with your stupid and insignificant problems, your ridiculous assumptions and your never ending rants. Friends who genuinely ask you how your day went and who know exactly how you feel at all times. So when I spotted this fridge magnet that instantly made me think of one my main girls,I thought - I need to get this for her.

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

The gift of great friends deserves spontaneous gifting in return sometimes. 

G.

Week Eleven: Timmies Freebies for a Stranger.

It’s that time of the year again. A time where the whole Canadian population dreads seeing the words “PLEASE PLAY AGAIN / RÉESSAYEZ SVP” after rolling the rim on a certain red cup. For some reason, the odds were in my favour this year as I already won 2 times out of 4. As much as I love free stuff (who doesn’t?), I figured someone out there might appreciate some personally handed freebies. So I decided to give it out to someone on my way to work one morning. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

The free coffee and donut were very well received by this elderly lady, who upon receiving these, flashed me the warmest smile that I would remember all day, and most probably will for the rest of my life. 

And this right here is the reason why I carry on with this project.

G. 

Week Ten: Kind Reflections for International Women's Day.

For week ten, I got inspired by International Women's Day, which fell on Friday March 8^th. I rummaged in my stuff for a mirror, added a couple of feel-good words and tapped it to a poll on the street.

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

Media and advertising imposes beauty standards onto women by depicting certain looks and body types. My goal was to showcase the viewer, encourage self-confidence and have people embrace their individuality. 

Even though I put this up for International Women's Day, I decided to keep it gender neutral (notice the French). I didn't wish to narrow it down to only women as I felt that everyone can appreciate a couple of encouraging words. Hope everyone had a great IWD!

G.

Week Nine: Leaving a Stamped Postcard at a Coffee Shop.

Earlier this week, I opened my email to find a message from one of my friends that I met in Paris. Unfortunately, since I’ve been a bit busy lately, I haven’t been actively communicating with her as much as I would like. She wanted to plan a skype call so we could catch up since the last time we were in touch was by mail correspondence around Christmas time. This made me think – it would be nice if I could encourage someone else to do the same thing with one of their long lost/distance friends. So I bought a postcard, added a stamp, wrote a small letter and left it at a coffee shop for someone to stumble upon. That 10 minutes that that person will take to write a small message will be sure worth the joy and surprise that it will bring in his/her old friend’s life. 

Instagram: geneseguin. #k4kproject

G.

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.