Random Acts of Kindness: The Spirit of Giving

One of the many iPeriod options for the second term was the Random Acts of Kindness iPeriod. Our group of nine students has been eager to help others and propose ideas on how to do so.

On the first day, the group got together to discuss what acts we wanted to do over the semester and how we could execute our ideas. All students decided to clean the dining hall, Growl and other shared spaces, and to deliver random gifts to people on campus.

Now, halfway through the term, we have accomplished many goals that we set out to do. When Halloween rolled around, we created over sixty treat bags with different types of candy for Darlington’s Security, dining hall, and facilities teams, and we delivered the treats to them personally.

Another act that we completed was heading down to Thatcher Hall to volunteer our time with the pre-K class. Together, we helped them achieve their Veterans Day "Thank You’s" to give to veterans the next day. We painted their hands as flags and had them put their handprints on paper, and then their names were added to the cards. Once we were finished helping the pre-K class, we played with them and got to know each of them individually.

We are hoping to spend time with the younger students again soon.

Our most recent act was personalizing hand sanitizers for faculty and staff. We customized bottles of hand sanitizer with the faculty’s name and added stickers. We enjoyed delivering the bottles to the faculty members, and they were extremely appreciative. We also colored bookmarks and wrote notes on them to put in random books in the library for students and faculty to help brighten their day. We also made Thanksgiving cards for our family and friends.

This iPeriod’s initiative was to serve without anything in return, and this is reflected in Darlington’s motto, “service beyond self.” We are looking forward to helping the Darlington Community in these next final weeks of the Random Acts of Kindness iPeriod.