The Sylvan Lake Municipal Library recently had to deal with an unexpected theft, where several bags of candy intended for their Wonka Day celebrations were stolen. Adding insult to injury, the theft took place during the library’s kindness week.
Luckily, the residents of Sylvan Lake stepped up in a big way.
“It was a little unfortunate that this happened during our Week of Kindness,” Library Programmer Corrie Brown said. “But for the one bad deed, we had at least three great responses where the community asked ‘what do you need’ and then said ‘we will give it to you.’ We are very appreciative of that.”
The stolen goods were replaced almost immediately by Sylvan Lakers, which is indicative of the kindness that the library was hoping to spread through their six-week Story Time kindness program.
“We did bird feeders and we did kindness post cards, where we sent out kindness post cards to random people in Sylvan Lake,” Brown said about the early stages of the program. “The response from that was great. Some people responded to the whole group, and some people responded to the individual kids that wrote to them.”
People throughout Sylvan Lake were excited to write back to the kids in the program, according to Brown.
“A couple of our really fun responses were from the Fire Department and the Police Department,” she said. “The Police Department sent out little hats and stickers for the kids, and the kids absolutely loved it. The fire department sent out stickers, and sent a letter back to the kids.”
The program followed these postcards up with Random Acts of Kindness, where each child in the Story Time program selected a good deed at random and went out into the community to fulfill it.
“The kids got their own envelope with a piece of paper in it,” Brown said. “They wrote down their own idea for a random act of kindness inside of it. Everyone then picked one from the random acts of kindness board, without knowing what is inside. Whatever was in it, they went and did. One of my favourite ones was someone had to tape loonies to toys at the dollar store. The family that did that one came in and told us about it - they had a great time. Afterwards, I called the dollar store and they were super excited about it too.”
She added, “that was really great, and we have had such great feedback from the community and the kids that went out and did it.”
Teaching young people to share kindness throughout their community is very important, according to Brown.
“It is the most important thing, especially at that young age,” she said. “They are learning from the people around them and it is good for adults, as well, to have that push. We all want to do something nice for others but it can be hard to come up with ideas. If you just pick one and do it - it is a great feeling.”
Brown feels being able to positively contribute to the community of Sylvan Lake is the ultimate goal of the library.
“It is absolutely important,” she said. “That is our goal, to be there for our community and meet their needs. It is a way to capitalize on the people already in the library and use them to spread out good things throughout the community. I think we have been really successful with that.”
If you would like to share some kindness in your community, the library’s Little Free Pantry is in heavy use right now, and would benefit from donations from the community.
Brown added, “I hope everyone goes out and does a random act of kindness.”
todd.vaughan@sylvanlakenews.com