7 Days of Giving February 2012

It's happening again! Take part in some giving this week - it's good for the soul, and it's good for the world!

Email us at 7daysofgiving@gmail.com and check out the Facebook Event!

Also, look on our website 7daysofgiving.weebly.com to find out more details and recall past events!

7 Days of Giving is in action

Hello hello!

7 Days of Giving is currently in action. With the most participation we have seen thus far, our facebook event is looking like the best form of communication.

Check it out here!

Hope your week is fabulous!

7 Days of Giving is coming back!

Yes! It's finally that time!

It's been more than 6 months since we've had some organized giving, so it's about time for another round.

7 Days of Giving February 2011 will take place from Sunday February 13 - Saturday February 19.

Stay tuned for updates!

Check us out on Facebook!

Another Round of Giving!

Another 7 Days of Giving will be starting today and continuing on until Saturday July 17th! Check our website at 7DaysofGiving.weebly.com or on Facebook!

Day 4: Anonymously buy something for a stranger

This is such a great day!! I love thinking about how the person reacts when they find out that a stranger paid for something for them.
I stopped by the movie theater and got out the exact change of the price a general admission ticket. I asked the woman behind the window if she would give the money to the next person in line and just tell them that the person before them paid for their ticket. She said, “uhh, I don’t think I can do this.” But then I gave her a Smile Card. Smile Cards are these wonderful business cards that say “Someone reached out to you with an anonymous act of kindness. Now it’s your chance to do the same. Do something nice for someone, leave this card behind, and keep the spirit going!” A stack of Smile Cards were sent to me by another giver and fortuitously arrived at my house today.
After she read the card she said, “Ok, yeah I guess I can do that. That is very nice.”

I then headed to Café Intermezzo (my favorite salad spot in Berkeley!) to pick up the salad my mom ordered to-go, I realized that Café Intermezzo would be the perfect place to buy something for a stranger because people who go there (in my opinion) would be likely candidates to pay it forward. After I paid for my salad I asked the cashier if he could do me a favor. I gave him ten bucks and asked him to tell the next customer that the person before him/her left money to cover his/her meal. He was a little confused at first, but then I handed him a Smile Card.
After the cashier read the card he said, “Oh. Ok, sure. Why not?”

And ‘Why not?’ is right!

Day 3: Shopping Carts

We arrived at Safeway with smiles on our faces and sneakers on our feet. As we traveled around the parking lot collecting shopping carts, we got a few funny looks and wanted to tell these customers what we were up to. One giver went up to a customer who had just finished loading his groceries into his car and she asked him if she could take the cart for him. This prompted a question out of him and ended in a smile. We were able to complete our act of the day quite quickly and one giver said, “Why not do this everyday? It’s so easy, yet so nice.”

Day 2: Free Lemonade Stand!

Well, our first word of advice would be that hot chocolate would have been a better choice in early January. We were lucky to choose a day that the sun was out here in Berkeley, but the air was still brisk, and winter is a hot drink season. My friends’ eagerness to contribute to the second day of giving warmed my heart. WarmGiver and Givingnome called me up and offered to hand squeeze lemons from WarmGiver’s lemon tree. I kindly accepted the offer, because I had been planning on buying the lemonade from a supermarket, and homemade lemonade is SO much better. I also loved their enthusiasm to get involved. Another friend, Spiral Giver, insisted on buying the cups and joined me at the table.

We set up again on Solano Ave with a “free homemade lemonade” sign and got started giving out lemonade. This event moved much slower than yesterday’s hugs. It was interesting how many people turned the free lemonade down. We wonder if that is because they were afraid of it being contaminated in some way or if it was just a different age demographic since it was mid day on a work day instead of a weekend. One thing that we noticed was that with free hugs, people just came and hugged and left, while with the lemonade stand, interested people came up and asked us lots of questions. They wanted to know why we were doing this (in most cases we guessed they were investigating if the lemonade was actually OK to drink or not), which provided us with great opportunities to publicize 7 Days of Giving. We gave out about 30 cups of lemonade and had some lovely conversations with other friendly and optomisitc Berkleyites.

We wrote some quotes down again:
“Oh yes, it’s good!”
“I don’t think I can, my tummy’s a little upset today, thanks friend.”
“What’s the catch?”

One man took a picture of us and came back five minutes later to show us that he posted a blurb about us on his facebook account with a link to this blog. Great publicity and a nice guy!