In August, a group of Richmond youth from the St. Albans area created 100 Gardens of Kindness packages and randomly distributed them to strangers in the Steveston and Minoru areas. Over 40 neighbourhood youth were involved in preparing and distributing the packages. Each gift bag consisted of a handmade greeting card, a packet of flower seeds, and an optional painted stone. Additionally, twenty percent of the packages included a Tim Hortons gift card. They also included an Indigenous land acknowledgement to remind all of the recipients of the land that the packages were being distributed on. The purpose of this project was to foster a sense of community within the neighbourhood by having youth prepare the packages together and to support the broader community.
I decided to apply for this grant to fund the project because of the neighbourhood’s desire for an engaging summer activity for kids. I wanted to combine a fun summer evening with an activity that spreads kindness in our community. The planning process involved deciding who the target audience should be. We never know what others are experiencing, especially when in-person interactions are becoming more scarce; hence, this project aims to alleviate the feeling of isolation in our community. Therefore, the project’s recipients are strangers in the local area who could all receive this random act of kindness that could potentially brighten their days.
A challenge that occurred was that we had to arrange many days for the card-making and stone painting events as well as the distribution. Each event required many neighbours’ participation, which made it difficult to accommodate everyone’s availability. We solved this challenge by having some card-making events during our annual Block Party so neighbours could stop by and create a few cards or paint some stones. This way, there were more opportunities for people to get involved with this project.
From this Gardens of Kindness project, I learned how to involve young kids in a meaningful project. For many of the youth, this was their first time participating in a service project. I was able to share the purpose of this project with them and make the card-making event interesting for them. Moreover, there were many logistics to this project such as how the packages would be distributed, what goes into them, and where the distribution would take place. I learned how to consider the details to ensure that the events went smoothly.
Overall, Gardens of Kindness was a successful and impactful project that could not have been executed without this grant.
