My daughter has always been one to make people smile. As soon as she could talk, she complimented everyone she met, and made it her personal mission to make people smile through word or deed. While we may deal with tween attitude from time to time, she still loves to help light up someone’s day. When presented with a Random Acts of Kindness challenge, it seemed only natural to bring my giving girl along.
Metropolis at Metrotown has partnered up with the CKNW Orphan Fund for Pink Shirt Day this month to help raise some money and spread some kindness and smiles about. What does this have to do with our challenge? Well, we were given a $50 gift card with the challenge to use it throughout the mall committing random acts of kindness. Game on!
Amy and I toyed around with different ideas on how to accomplish this. Spending $50 should be pretty easy, but we wanted to create a lot of smiles, and stretch the gift card as much as we could. And, with Valentine’s Day also approaching, Amy wrote out a dozen valentines too.
Our first stop was Metro Flowers to buy five carnations with the intention of passing a few out with the valentines, and leaving a couple in random places for someone to find. They were well received, and a good start, but we needed more.
Our next stop was Purdy’s for 3 tasty Purdy’s chocolate bars. Obviously we still had Valentine’s Day on our mind. Flowers and bars in tow, we headed to Tim Horton’s. Firstly, to buy ourselves lunch, but also to use our Metropolis at Metrotown card to pay for the orders of a few people behind us. All three customers we treated were stunned, smiling and grateful and after we ate, we left behind a valentine and chocolate bar for someone.
Unsure of what to do next to spend the card, we passed out a few flowers and a chocolate bar to some more surprised shoppers, until Superstore was in sight. Hey! What about buying someone’s groceries? A quick trip down the express aisle and we found a woman mid transaction, slipped the cashier the gift card and told her it was on us. It wasn’t a huge bill, just under $20, but that recipient was so grateful, she caught up to say thank you again as we headed out the store. The cashier who took the card was pretty stunned too…she asked me if I was sure three or four times!
With about $8 left on the card, we wondered what to do when we came upon LUSH. Truly, we went in because my daughter wanted to see, smell and sample, but as we got to talking, we thought maybe we could spend the rest of the gift card on LUSH samples. Well, we talked to a very helpful Jodi, who talked to her people, and she came back with a handful of generous samples…free of charge! The recipients of the LUSH samples certainly smiled and that still left us with that $8, and by this time, sore feet.
As we wondered towards the area we were parked near, we passed a Booster Juice. Bam! Card spent and our last smile/puzzled thank you. Walking to the car fully spent, we tallied up our day; 18 strangers whose day we helped brighten.
What struck me most about this adventure, was how absolutely confused people were that a stranger might give something, buy something, or do something random for someone, with no expectation of anything in return. What that tells me is, we need to do more to spread the kindness about. And random acts of kindness don’t have to cost anything either. Kindness itself is free, sprinkle that stuff everywhere!
So, what would you do with a $50 Metropolis at Metrotown gift card of your own and a random act of kindness challenge? Metropolis at Metrotown wants to know! They just so happen to be holding a Paying It Forward contest! Just tell them how you would ‘pay it forward’ within the mall in 100 words or less, and for every entry they receive, they will donate $1 to the CKNW Orphans’ Fund up to $2500 max.
Of course, a contest isn’t a contest without a prize. So besides the feel good feelings of helping a great charity just by sharing your Pay it Forward idea, you can win a $500 shopping spree AND $500 for a local charity! Contest runs from February 11-25.
Enter here: win.metropoliscontests.com
Want another chance to win? Metropolis at Metrotown has generously given us a $50 gift card to giveaway to one lucky reader! Enter below.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
{Disclosure: We were provided with a gift card to execute our random acts of kindness, no additional compensation was received}
