Weekly Uplifting Stories - July 1st, 2024

Life is an ongoing journey of learning.

We need to strive to keep our curiosity alive, try new experiences, and explore the world around us!

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear and superstition. - Bernard Beckett

No matter how old you get, never stop seeking new insights and looking for learning opportunities!

This week we bring you amazing stories about people who are inspiring others to embrace learning beyond school.

• Woman spends more than a hundred days performing acts of kindness
• Bookmobile is instilling a passion for reading in young girls
• Preschoolers form meaningful inter-generational relationships with seniors
• A teacher encourages her students to spread kindness

Weekly Uplifting Stories - July 1st, 2024

Woman's personal experiment highlights the impact of kindness.

When Kasley Killam decided to conduct a personal experiment, she had no idea of the extent of the positive impact it would have on her.

She spent 108 days performing acts of kindness and prioritizing meaningful connections with others.

From making strangers smile to going out of her way to help her friends, she spent her days embracing every opportunity to make a positive difference in people's lives.

Her goal was to make a habit out of performing acts of kindness. At the end of her experiment, she noticed a significant improvement in her own well-being.

"I became more in tune with the people around me — listening more intently, empathizing more intensely — and opened up more, inviting others to get closer to me. I felt deeply connected to friends, family, my community, and myself," said Kasley.

Self-Kindness Counts: The 12 Kindest Things You Can Do For Yourself→

One non-profit's initiative is fostering the love of reading in young girls.

FLOW, the Free Library on Wheels, is a nonprofit based in Bay County, Florida that gives young readers access to free books.

FLOW, along with Girls Inc., organized a free book giveaway to help young girls develop their love of reading.

Seeing such a big collection of books, the girls were extremely excited about taking their favorites home!

Executive Director of Girls Inc. Bay County, Catherine Glover, said,

"Literacy is essential to development of any human being. The fact that we are able to work with FLOW to provide girls with books many times over the year to encourage them to have a library of their own and understand how fun it is and important it is to be literate is just a beautiful relationship between Girls Inc. and FLOW".

Intergenerational program promotes bonding between preschoolers and the elderly.

Pre-schoolers from My First Skool at Braddell Heights Community Hub in Singapore have a special relationship with seniors at a local senior daycare center.

The little kids visit the seniors twice a month to learn dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese. They also make arts and crafts and celebrate festivals and birthdays together.  

The dialect lessons are part of an Intergenerational Programme created to empower seniors with a greater sense of purpose.

An inter-generational relationship not only helps boost seniors’ self-esteem but also instills values of empathy, compassion, and respect in pre-schoolers.

"They make me feel young. I find it very nice to interact with children because I have been living alone. That's why I like company," said Sim Yiok Han, a program participant.

Teacher's lesson about kindness is inspiring children and adults alike.

Elementary school teacher Natalie Ringold is using a toothpaste tube to teach a wonderful life lesson to her students.

As she squeezes toothpaste out of the tube, she explains the importance of using kind words.

Just like we can't put the toothpaste back once it's out of the tube, things we say cannot be taken back. We need to be more mindful of what we say to others.

We need to spread kindness with our words.

"You try to apologize, you try to take the words back…and you try to undo what you said, undo what you did. But it's something they couldn't change about themselves, and so it gets very messy. You can't totally take those words back. You can't totally fix it. Your words have power and your words matter," said Natalie.

What's Your Uplifting Story?

And that wraps it up for this week! 

Do you have any Uplifting Stories of your own? You can contact us in the comments below, or reach out on our Instagram page. We might just share your story in a future article!

Thanks everyone for reading, and have an uplifting week ahead. Take care and see you next week! 

Photo by Alex Green