by Dave Wendland, vice president, strategic relations, for our Random Acts of Kindness blog series
It began quietly in December 2015, and concluded with a thunderous roar of appreciation and thankfulness. When George first brought the idea of a Random Acts of Kindness Challenge forward, no one could have predicted the tremendous, heartfelt goodwill that would spread across our neighboring communities and throughout our office.
My daughter and I participated. We placed five dollars each inside of 10 hand-written Christmas notes and shared them with homeless individuals a church group was hosting in their heated church basement. The smile on my daughter’s face could have lit an entire room. Once we found ourselves focused on sharing kindness with others, we discovered many other acts of benevolence: delivering soup and blankets to several homeless people seated on the curb near downtown Milwaukee; baking cookies and taking them to our local fire station; and donating our gently used coats to the local Salvation Army center.
I’m so proud of the entire HRG team. From my experience, most would agree that our normal year-long generosity is unique (especially for a company our size). And it certainly isn’t for publicity or visibility, it is truly from our hearts with a genuine commitment to our community and to our fellow Americans.
One final word: did you know that the Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Foundation (yes, there’s a foundation for that: www.randomactsofkindness.org), encourages an entire week to perform Random Acts of Kindness? The 2017 activities occur February 12-18 during RAK Week. Do you have the willingness to participate? You can count on the Hamacher Resource Group team spreading kindness that week…and I trust we’ll be participating in RAKs throughout the entire year.