Pay it forward – the concept is simple, the potential impact strong. Asking the recipient of a good deed to pass along an act of kindness to another instead of repaying back the original person can create a domino effect of philanthropy.
Temple is experiencing its own wave of paying it forward thanks to 122 members of Alpha Epsilon Phi with their “26 Acts of Kindness” – a national movement incepted on Main Campus by Devon Gorson, vice president of philanthropy for the sorority.
With each act of kindness, members of the sorority hand the stranger a note explaining that each act is meant to honor one of the 26 lives lost in the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newton, Conn.
The Temple News applauds AEPhi for keeping Sandy Hook victims the focus of a tragedy that often gets overwhelmed with gun-rights debates or quickly swept out of people’s thoughts as another tragic event enters the media.
Doing something nice for a stranger, no matter how small, is something not passed along enough on a campus of students often locked into their own day-to-day responsibilities.
Whether it’s paying for someone’s coffee in line behind you or taping a dollar to a vending machine, these small, yet thoughtful, acts by AEPhi not only keep the Sandy Hook dialogue alive, but also push down the first domino in starting a movement.
If you were one of the recipients of “26 Acts of Kindness,” pay it forward. And if not, take a moment out of your week to think of someone else – someone you don’t know – and start your own gratifying ripple effect.
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