My younger sister, Kara Sordi Semon, has worked for ARG for years. She shared the $35 with us and included the “Magnify Kindness” letter.
As a 30-year veteran public education teacher, I applaud your efforts to magnify kindness, as I firmly believe we must be the change we want to see in the world. Compassion and kindness are changes I admire that ARG promotes.
As our family gathered from across the nation to commemorate our parents, Nick & Eileen Sordi’s 60th wedding anniversary in Ocean View, Delaware, we indulged in (almost) nightly pilgrimages for ice cream after resplendent yet sweltering days at Bethany Beach. We delighted in witnessing the families lining up at a fun local ice cream emporium, “Bonkeys”, with kids analyzing their perfect selections for their frozen treat. As childhood is fleeting and far too often costly for parents, we thought we’d treat a family to ice cream with ARG’s $35.
Time eluded us, so on our last day, much to our chagrin, we realized we had forgotten to pay for a family’s ice cream at Bonkey’s. With fondness, I watched two little girls playing with childlike abandon, enthralled with their day at the beach, and decided I would give them the $35 to pay for their family’s ice cream. I approached their mother, explained the ARG “Magnify Kindness” random act of kindness program, sharing both the card and the cash with the mother. She was surprised and explained to the girls that they now needed to perform a random act of kindness for another person. After the girls rushed back to the waves, we chatted a while. When the mother learned I was a Colorado teacher, she tearfully shared that her 3rd-grade daughter had recently been assigned an Individual Education Plan because she had been experiencing memory loss due to Sickle Cell Disease, which rightly terrified this mother. She inquired all about Special Education services, about how IEPs worked, and expressed her fears for her daughter’s academic future, recounting her daughter’s upsetting memory deficits.
ARG’s Magnify Kindness campaign opened the door for me to meet and console an understandably scared mother, whose daughter is battling an insidious disease, and allowed me to reassure her about how an IEP can help her daughter, how to advocate for her girl, as well as how to access additional resources. I hope I encouraged her in her battle to help her beloved child.
I left that interaction, reminded of what I routinely share with my teenage students: to show grace, compassion, and kindness, because everyone is fighting a battle about which we know nothing.
Thank you, ARG, for this magnanimous campaign: may these random acts of kindness ignite a chain reaction, reaching more people than one can imagine. You ARE making a difference in the world. What a beautiful endeavor on which ARG has embarked.