By KAROLINA JURESIUTE
Senior Reporter
Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate towards others. It involves actions and behaviors that show care, compassion and empathy. Being kind can mean helping someone in need, offering a smile or a kind word, or simply being patient and understanding.
Northwestern Oklahoma State University’s students and employees, the community of Alva and other close by towns are participating in a Day of Kindness on Nov. 15. This date is based on the World Kindness Day which is celebrated every year on Nov. 13.
This is the fourth year that Northwestern has participated in this celebration.
Northwest Oklahoma in Enid who has been involved with this kindness event since 2015, generally selects a date close to the world event, so Nov. 15 is the day to celebrate in this area this year.
The day of Kindness was introduced in 1998 to promote kindness throughout the world.
It is observed in many countries including Australia, Canada, India, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“Four years ago, the United Way of Northwest Oklahoma in Enid, asked if there would be anyone at the university who could head up this day of kindness, to get people on the Northwestern campuses and Alva involved and for whatever reason, I said okay, sure let’s see what we can do,” said Valerie Case, assistant director of Northwestern University relations.
From then on Case has been trying to coordinate the day of Kindness on Northwestern’s campus.
“It is a day of just showing kindness to others, several random acts of kindness that place that day,” Case said. “We have been trying to get as many people at Northwestern and in Alva involved in it, we try to compile a list of what everyone is doing, and we make that available to United Way so they have that within their huge list of things that are going on in the Northwest Oklahoma.”
There will be around 20 clubs and organizations of Northwestern and about the same number of projects and groups of Alva community participating in this special day event.
Groups and individuals can participate in Kindness Day by doing something as simple as writing notes of positivity and sticking them around campus or by doing something else such as, giving donuts to faculty, staff or students.
“It is just kind of fun in a way to see people get involved in it and how it makes you feel good when you’re doing things for other people and obviously it makes them happy whenever they are the recipients,” Case said. “We encourage people, if you can’t do it on Nov. 15, pick a day during the week, the main thing is to just do something nice for somebody else whether it’s on Nov. 15 or not.”