Random Acts of Kindness. They happen every day. Sometimes we are so busy and caught up in our own lives we may not see them. We may not realize how many and how often these wonderful random acts of kindness happen throughout any given day. Some acts are huge, generous and very noticeable while others are small and can sometimes go unnoticed until we really focus.
Pittsburgh’s Here You Go, gives out umbrellas on rainy days with just a request to spread the kindness in return. Equipped with a stock of 1,000 umbrellas, Here You Go has outfitted a staff of some 50 volunteers for random acts of kindness on Pittsburgh’s many rainy days. Volunteers watch for sodden individuals without umbrellas on the city’s soggy streets and then cheerfully give them one of Here You Go’s bright yellow offerings. Attached to each specially designed umbrella is a waterproof postcard encouraging the recipient to do something kind for someone else in return. They’re invited to describe their kind act on the card and mail it back to Here You Go, which then posts the story on its site.
Julie Kresen, flanked by Geoff Barnes and Katy DeLancey, are the team behind “Here You Go,” where distinctive yellow umbrellas are given to someone stranded in the rain and the recipients are asked to do a good deed for someone else.
It’s part of a pay-it-forward project that started two years and 1,000 umbrellas ago and already is generating interest from around the world.
It was an unexpected moment of kindness that put Julie Kresen on the road to creating the “Here You Go” program. Sitting in her car at a red light, she saw a young woman waiting for a bus in the rain. For reasons Kresen can’t quite explain, she hopped out of her car and gave her umbrella to the woman.
“She was so thankful, and I felt great about it for hours,” said Ms. Kresen of Emsworth. “I just started thinking, ‘Man, I want to give everybody an umbrella.’ ”
And with that rainy day, an idea started to bloom.” I knew I was going to need the umbrella as soon as I got where I was going,” she says, “but I gave it to her.” Driving to a dollar store to pick up another umbrella, Kresen was thrilled at having brightened a stranger’s day. “I started thinking, how could I buy lots of umbrellas and see if I could just give them out … and I started asking everyone I knew to start giving me umbrellas instead of gifts.”
The project began to take shape when Kresen’s boyfriend gave her 50 umbrellas as a birthday gift. A graphic designer friend created postcards to attach to each umbrella, asking recipients to keep the kindness going by doing something nice for someone else.
Kresen planned to fund the growing project herself with help from friends, but then another moment of serendipity intervened: She came across an application for a Seed grant from the Sprout Fund. “I started looking at the criteria for the grant,” she says, “and I saw one that said ‘to enhance the image of the region through community activities and building diversity between groups, and bring young people together…” And I thought ‘this is completely what I’m doing!”
Unexpectedly, Kresen then lost her job: “I spent the entire first week after my layoff writing the application and submitting it at the very last second.” The Seed grant came through, funding the purchase of 1000 umbrellas. Dozens of enthusiastic volunteers are now armed with umbrellas, handing them out around Pittsburgh on rainy days. They say these acts of giving are as inspiring for them as for the recipients.
