Day 91: Sat In The Dark

These random acts have allowed me the honor to interact with many different and inspiring people from all across the United States. What is even more overwhelming, and thanks to the speed and reach of social media, is that I have also been privileged to speak to and learn from people living in Australia, Tibet, Japan, the Ivory Coast, the UK, South Korea and many other places. If you would have told me as a child that I would have people that I could call friends in every corner of the planet, my mind would have exploded. I one day hope to take my wife and daughter to some of these places to meet up with my friends and perform kind acts in different locations. But for now, I can join along with millions of others across the globe to perform an act of kindness that will raise awareness so that we can protect our "home" for future generations. This evening, for my random act of kindness, I will turn off all of the lights in my home, and sit in the dark for one hour in observance of Earth Hour. Earth Hour was started by World Wildlife Foundation Australia in 2004 as a way to bring about awareness for the ever-growing problem of climate change. Since then, the movement has gone worldwide with over 130 countries participating with their own Earth Hour celebrations. So tonight, I am going to go against what Enrique Iglesias once told me, and turn off the lights.

Day 90: Donated A Suit

When I first graduated from IU and started interviewing for jobs in California, I looked like a shlub. No tie. Doc Marten's. Cargo pants. I still have no idea how I was hired at my first job. I guess my personality outweighed the fact that I looked like a frat guy who rolled out of bed late for his 8AM class (truth be told: I would have just slept through said 8AM class). It would be a solid 6-8 months before I owned my first suit because at that time it was really hard to afford one.

After taking my first job as a recruiter, I started to realize that, for better or worse, appearance/clothes did have somewhat of an impact on whether or not someone would be hired. In an ideal world, people would be judged on their skill sets and qualifications, but that sadly isn't the case. Although the economy is markedly improving, there are still many people out there who remain unemployed, and many do not have the means to purchase clothing necessary for interviews. So today, for my random act of kindness, I will be donating one of my suits through a tremendous organization called Career Gear. The suit is still in great shape, and my hope is that it will help someone in their efforts to land a job. For any women out there who would like to donate suits or other interview clothes, there is a great group called Dress For Success that distributes clothes specifically to women. If someone gets a job because of clothing provided by the 366 Random Acts community then it will be Legen......wait for it.............DARY!

Day 89: Donated a Printer

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, my wife is a teacher here in Chicago. She takes tremendous pride in how hard she works to ensure that her students are at grade level in each of their subjects, and prepared to advance on in school. I see all of the effort that she puts in to each and every child in her classroom, and while she works extremely hard for the children, a teacher can only do so much. It is up to the parents to have an active role in the educational lives of their children outside of the classroom. Lindsey has been blessed with a number of parents who see this and work to ensure that their children's learning doesn't end at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Recently, Lindsey told me a story about one such set of parents. They are extremely supportive of the education of their daughter, and it shows as she is one of the top performing students in my wife's classroom. At home, the mom preaches the importance of education to her children as she understands what it takes for a child to be successful. One of the ways that she helps further her children's learning at home is by printing off fun and creative homework assignments. However, a few weeks back, the family's printer broke, and they don't have the disposable income to purchase a new printer. Lindsey has told me time and time again how much of an impact these assignments have had on her student's education, and we have been trying to figure out a way that we could help. We have a perfectly fine printer sitting in our house that we rarely use, and recently, I received a printer from my company for use in my home office. Rather than take out my aggressions on our old printer, for today's random act of kindness, we will be donating it to the family of my wife's student. They definitely deserve it for all that they do to ensure the success of their kids in the classroom and beyond.