The kind way to teach our kids
I have never experienced such kindness, it’s touched my heart so deeply.
Alison Bunce is dedicated to making her community more compassionate – one act of kindness at a time.
The selfless Scot has been inspired by an international movement to spread kindness, and her new focus is teaching children to be kind.
Alison founded Compassionate Inverclyde last year and recently launched a new programme called High 5, working with 30 schools and thousands of primary school aged children to demonstrate the power of kindness.
“Children are like sponges, if you show them the way they will quickly follow,’ says Alison. “One school – St Michael’s Primary in Port Glasgow – is doing some beautiful kindness quilts which are being given out to the local community. They also present a balloon to a child in assembly who has been particularly kind. Other children can nominate a child to be awarded. It is up to us to foster and empower young people to show kindness.”
CONFIDENCE
Alison, who is trained as a palliative nurse, first set up the social movement to help people at the end of their lives. The No One Dies Alone campaign frees up clinical resources in hospital wards, working with a hospice and in care homes. She is now working with teenagers, including 13-year-olds at Notre Dame High School in Greenock. “I have about 20 girls who have nicknamed themselves The Kindness Girls,” she says.
They work with people in care homes, the homeless and with premature babies. They are fundraising to put together packs for new parents with babygros and wipes.
“I am also working with some 16-year-olds at St Columba’s High School, Gourock, who we are teaching to implement the High 5 programme and lesson plans to younger pupils,” Alison says.
Children are also involved in a project called Back Home Boxes, where anyone who lives alone and is being discharged from Inverclyde Royal Hospital is given a pack of donated household essentials.
More than 1,400 boxes have been distributed since the scheme started last year, with 41 helpers packing and delivering them to patients in the hospital twice a day.
One recipient wrote to volunteers and said: “In all of my 92 years I have never experienced such kindness. This box has touched my heart so deeply.”
Alison says: “The difference it has made is amazing. It’s all about kindness. The generosity of the children - anwd wider community - is overwhelming and of course I could not do it without my team of volunteers. They keep everything running.”
Compassionate Inverclyde has been chosen as a TSB Local Charity Partner for the bank’s Greenock, Port Glasgow and Rothesay branches.