BETTENDORF, Iowa — It started as a class project, but Bettendorf High School senior Phil Gist’s kindness campaign is making the world a little bit brighter.
In his Entertainment Marketing class, the students were challenged to start a blog, target an audience and try to get pageviews. Gist’s blog, “Random Acts of Kindness” is all about spreading positivity: from giving happy letters to friends, to offering food to complete strangers.
“While I was driving in the drive thru at McDonald’s, a thought occurred to me. Why not buy something for the person who serves me?”
That’s one of the entries Gist wrote in his blog, which was started in late September. In the blog he wrote that he hadn’t offered an act of kindness to a stranger yet, and figured he’d give it a try.
“She said this is the first time that a thing like this has happened to her, and thought she might start doing something like this also.”
Gist said that he’s had several friends asking to be part of the blog… everyone wants to experience kindness, right?
As the class works on their blog projects, the students are ultimately competing for play money, that they’ll use in exchange for a class-wide game at the end of the quarter. The more play money the students have, the better their odds of winning the game, since they’ll have more opportunities to “buy in.”
Gist said he’s not sure if he’ll continue the blog after the assignment is complete, but it sure has made an impact.
We’ll leave you with this passage from the blog:
“Imagine the world with lots of people doing random acts of kindness, a better world.”
