Planting the Seeds of a Local Kindness Movement

By GipsySoul, A Cape Ann Angel

I was recently inspired by a very cool experiment done by our friends at
HelpOthers. They invited folks who visit their website to contribute their best idea as to what they would do with an extra $100 if it were given to them to spread kindness in their community. Awesome ideas were posted in response.

It occured to me that it would be quite easy and fun to bring together 10 Cape Ann Angels to explore a few out-of-the-box ways to engage our community in a public brainstorming about what might be the most inspiring use of $100 to spread kindness on Cape Ann.

Here are a few possibilities as a starting point...

One strategy could be to have each of these 10 angels interview 10 people in the community about how they would use that $100, making sure we include a wide spectrum of folks (the mayor, a few city councilors, police officers, highschool students, artists, local merchants, random folks walking down the street etc.). Another (or additional) strategy could be to ask the leaders of a few local congregations and youth groups to participate in this experiment and ask their members what they would do with that $100. We probably could also ask the local paper to put that question in a free ad in the week end edition.

Whatever strategies we pursued, we would post the best ideas on our website and ask the local paper to publish them as well. We could also perhaps ask our friends at Help Others whether they might be able to set up a page for this Cape Ann experiment so that we could actually vote on each others' ideas.

Mind you, this is not a theoretical exercise. Cape Ann Angels just happened to have received a gift of $500 to give away as part of a flow fundingexperiment. This means that we are actually in a position to reward the top 5 best ideas that come out of our community brainstorming!

If you would like to join Cape Ann Angels and attend the in-person gathering where we will choose our strategies for planting the seeds of a local kindness movement, please email team@capeannangels.org