Kindness Broadcast


Jayeshbhai has singing the glories of acts of kindness to everyone he meets, and encouraging all to do the same, even if only in experimentation at first. The idea has taken root in a number of places, including at YUVA, an organization working to mobilize Ahmedabad high school and college-aged youth into social service.


One day, as Jayeshbhai was telling me to story of an act of kindness, he got a phone call from the Amitabh Shah, the founder of YUVA. A small corps of about 30 YUVA volunteers had taken doing acts of kindness to heart, and met every Monday afternoon to share them with one another. A few guys decided to do something nice for one of most reviled class of street denizens: the traffic cops. Figuring that they receive no appreciation for the work that they do and suffer all day in the Ahmedabadi heat, some guys decided to buy a cop some ice cream. The cop thought it was a joke. After much conversation, he was finally convinced they were sincere and may have even shed a tear or two that someone expressed care for him in such an unexpected way. At any rate, someone with connections in the media happened to be at the YUVA meeting where this story was shared. These acts of kindness struck him as so refreshing that he arranged for a weekly column in the Times of India highlighting the ‘top’ acts of kindness from that week. Separately, he also arranged for Radio Mirchi, Ahmedabad’s ‘hottest’ radio station to broadcast the acts of kindness in a weekly radio program. YUVA organizers are excited about the prospects of igniting wildfires of kindness from the sparks of light let off so far.