Random acts of kindness

The 12th day of Christmas

After being told she would never have children and undergoing a series of painful operations, Naomi Lambert felt hopeless and alone. She took it upon herself to start a peer support group, which taught her about the importance of communication. Then she felt moved to do even more to spread kindness, and The Cool To Be Kind Project was born. Just before Christmas last year, she created 50 “kindness cards” and on each she wrote a suggested random act of kindness. Then she hid them around her community in WA and was delighted when people took up her challenges. One man took a homeless person out to lunch at a ve-star restaurant. A woman dying of cancer volunteered at a homeless shelter to gain perspective.

Naomi continues to leave cards far and wide and her website is full of suggestions for everyday kindness, like: learn to say hello in different languages; cook a meal for a friend; pay for a stranger’s morning coffee; or simply pick up the phone and tell someone far away that you miss them.

Naomi is now working to create cards that can be mass distributed but she encourages those around her to use their imaginations and their empathy to come up with kindness initiatives of their own. “We’ve all got it in us,” she insists.