Make A Difference.

This was the challenge we accepted at the end of those two life-altering weeks at the IGE in Mauritius.

I’ve always believed in passing forward good deeds. When people feel that someone was kind to them, they will often go around for the rest of the day remembering this, consciously or subconsciously. This will in effect prompt them to also do a good deed. That good deed will spread forth from person to person, like ripples in a pond, or falling dominoes. So all it takes is something to start this phenomenon. So how do you cheer many people up in a simple but effective way? I thought — you smile. So I got some people together — some Award Holders, some not. And on the 7th of November we went down to the beach of the city of Haifa, Israel where I live and handed out smiles. A lot of them. Almost five-hundred to be more exact.

The process was simple. I went earlier and prepared little notes that had on them a smiley-face and a few words: “Simply Smile”, “Smile — It’s Simple”, “Smile — Pass It Forward” (these are the translations from Hebrew, of course). We made about 500 copies of these on colored paper, split them up between us, and walked up to the beach-goers with a smile asking them “May I give you a smile?” handed them a note, smiled again and left. We started out with almost 500 smiley notes. We finished them in about 40 minutes.

The responses to this were amazing. Most people first had a look on their face that said “What is this?”. Then they looked on the back of the note as if to see if there is an advertisement there, or some catch. Seeing none they asked “What organization/political party/group are you from?” We always responded the same — “No group, only a few youths who decided to do something nice.” Some asked us why we were doing this, to which we answered “We thought it would be a good idea.” The idea was to make this initiative so simple, so innocent, so natural that people would pass the word around, and also start doing random acts of kindness everywhere. The Domino effect in action. Also, it was important for us that people see that no one sent us, that this was something that anyone can do, and that not all of Israel’s youth are sitting at home watching TV rather than doing something.

A few reactions left their mark on me and my friends. Two twenty-something year old girls said to one another after I had given them the smiley notes — “how come we didn’t think of this?”. I’m sure that they’ll be doing something like this next. One older lady, when asked by one of our girls if she can “give her a smile” replied “Of course. May I give you a hug?”, promptly got up, and embraced her. My younger brother, who was also participating, tells me that he got to a mother playing with her toddler son on the beach, who was constantly crying, but stopped upon getting a smile. Some people told us “Good on you” or “it’s good to see that the youth are still active in this country”. Many people laughed at how great it is. Almost everyone smiled. I saw a few small girls trading the different colored notes with their parents — they wanted the pink ones.

I feel that this activity was a great success. We set out to Make A Difference — by cheering people up so that they will pass this happiness forward, by showing people that youth are active and by showing people how easy it is to just do something good.

I say that this activity was “inspired by the Award”, rather than being organized by it. We were not an organization. We were just a few people with an idea and the will to carry it out.

To Make A Difference.

The video of the activity:

Thanks IGE.

Shalom.