Dubai You are unassumingly going through your daily work or school routine when you stumble upon an origami animal with a nicely printed note naming you and thanking you for all the effort and time you put into your work.
Along with it is a business card bearing nothing but the name ‘Kindness Anonymous' and an e-mail address.
‘Kindness Anonymous' is a small initiative started by two people at the Winchester School of Dubai.
As they have requested that their identity be kept secret, they will be referred to as Jane and John.
"None of us wants credit for it, because we are doing it because it is the right thing to do." John told Gulf News.
"We select people, we write them a nice note, something that will make them feel good about themselves. We concentrate on people who need some encouragement. We put our card and the origami animal with the note and give it to them anonymously," Jane explained.
Interesting experiment
She said they choose origami animals because it takes effort and time, and will get the message across that the person cares and was willing to invest this time and effort.
"There is a website and email address on the card so that they can contact us if they see that anyone needs help or if they want to talk to us about anything."
"We are investing our time, our creativity and we are giving it to someone else and not expecting anything in return," John explained. "So we thought that would be an interesting experiment to see how people would react. There was a buzz in school. They checked the website and sent us an email asking about how to join."
John said that they plan on expanding Kindness Anonymous by making it a small secret society and spread this culture of kindness. "We talk about creativity being important. Creativity is art, literature and music, but why don't we use our creativity to be kind? Come up with interesting ways of sharing kindness."
Kindness Anonymous founders said that they were thinking of having an ‘Anonymous Day', where they encourage people to do small acts of kindness "even if it was just smiling at each other or opening a door for someone else," Jane said.
"We are trying to encourage little acts like this that will encourage people and completely transform the school environment, make it a much kinder, warmer place."
"The school tried desperately to find out who is behind it, but they still haven't discovered," John said with a wide grin. He added that if we want a better society, we need to bring such activities into the curriculum.
"In a fun and exciting way and having a secret society is exciting, something that will intrigue students.
"The lady that delivers the notes around the school, she is always going up and down the stairs, no one really pays attention to her and so when she got this note she was in tears," John said.
Contact details
Log on to www.kindnessanonymous.comOr e-mail kindnessanonymous@gmail.com
