Josh Stern, med student at the University of Ottawa and Russell Citron, founder of Toronto-based organization Kindness Counts and management consultant at Deloitte, first met each other during shared a summer at Camp Manitou. They stayed in touch, later attending the same college, so it was no surprise when Josh received a call from Russell a few weeks ago, praising Josh’s recently posted Facebook video, a response to a Neknomination bid.
If you haven’t heard of the Neknomination, then let me fill you in. It is an online drinking craze where friends nominate other friends to film themselves binge drinking under creative circumstances and post the videos on Facebook. Said to originate in Australia, the fad has gone viral – and global. Josh Stern watched the videos come to Canada and knew it was just a matter a time before he was chosen as the next link in the chain. But he decided to do something different with his nomination; he decided to “change the chain”. Inspired by a video of a do-gooder feeding local homeless men and women in South Africa, Josh handed out sandwiches to homeless Ottawa residents. He posted the video with the hashtag #feedthedeed (and you can see it here). Within minutes, he had received a number of likes and a call from his friend, Russell. “I had the exact same idea as you,” Russell said, and the two paired up to create Feed the Deed under the auspices of Russell’s organization, Kindness Counts, whose goal is to “try to inspire kindness in creative and unconventional ways.”
This foundation began a year and a half ago, with two key principles behind it. The first is that “kindness is active” and “requires going out and… conducting yourself in a kind manner” rather than simply not being mean. The second is that we must use creativity to do good, rather than evil. This latter idea is inspired by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, professor and award-winning author. An homage to Russell’s deceased uncle, Ken Citron, the organization was created to honour Citron’s love of kindness and bears his initials proudly. It works with high schools and university students to organize events such as the “pay it forward chain”, where one class section is given free hot chocolate and encouraged to do a good deed for another section as payback. To such events, the “response is incredible,” says Russell. He also mentions the organization once made fortune cookies with “creative acts of kindness” inside them and distributed these around 10 Toronto-based schools.
Naturally, this organization was the perfect way to disseminate the Feed the Deed concept. Since they began the hashtag, Russell and Josh “have seen hundreds of videos… from all over the world”. On Valentine’s Day, Montreal-based singer Nikki Yanofsky even posted a video. Josh admits that it “feels incredible” to be part of this counterculture movement. There are “so many acts of kindness, small and big, but everything’s great so far.” Their personal favourite good deeds? The 18-year-old boy who returned to the hospital where he was treated for Cancer when he was younger and did a good deed for the nurses who treated him and the second-year McGill student who cut off most of her hair to donate to Locks of Love. Other popular kind acts have been buying coffee for the people behind you in line (especially at Tim Hortons) and giving coffee or gift cards to hardworking bus drivers.
Haven’t been nominated yet? Don’t wait; Josh encourages you to “start your own chain.” Make sure you make the video public, tag the Kindness Counts page and include the #feedthedeed hashtag in your post. You can also get involved with Kindness Counts itself by messaging the organization on Facebook.
Photos Retrieved from: The Kindness Counts Facebook page.