Our guide to giving back

Almost every faith on Earth insists it's better to give than to receive, and science now tells us that acts of kindness improve our own physical and mental health. Genevieve Gannon looks at 12 ways to spread good cheer this Christmas.

Rochelle Courtenay was moved to major acts of community kindness when she read about the “period poverty” that many women face. In 2015, she founded Share the Dignity to provide sanitary items to homeless women. Then, around Christmas that year, she was cleaning out her bathroom cupboard when she had an idea for another way to support women in need.

“I had an abundance of cosmetic stuff that people had gifted me but I’d never used,” Rochelle says. “I also happened to be cleaning out my handbag and thought how cool it would be if you got all of this stuff in a handbag for Christmas.”

She took a photo of her bag lled with toiletries and posted it online. It went “quite viral” and Share the Dignity’s ‘It’s In The Bag’ initiative was born. Rochelle encouraged others to ll handbags with essentials and that rst year, 26,000 bags were distributed to women across the country. The following year, more than 100,000 bags of love were donated.

One 28-year-old woman who escaped a violent relationship after growing up in the foster system told Rochelle the bag she received was the rst present she had been given since she was 14 years old. “She talked about the smell of Pantene in that bag the way you or I would talk about French Champagne or chocolate,” Rochelle says.