Recently, the steering committee for the Juneau Police Department Initiative, 2017 Year of Kindness, had quite a challenge. How do you end a Year of Kindness? How do you stop something you believe should continue?
Some of the truly inspired acts of kindness we have seen so far this year:
• Rooms at Housing First furnished and made cozy with handmade quilts
• Food and supplies donated to multiple nonprofit groups
• Strangers helping pick up dropped groceries in parking lots
• Men growing scruffy mustaches for fundraising
• Books shipped to senior centers in Southeast villages
• Countless bags of trash picked up
The Year of Kindness entered everyday conversation in Juneau, even when it involved a person beseeching JPD officers to let them out of a speeding ticket, on the grounds that the Year of Kindness was JPD’s initiative. As the national environment around us continues to have violent displays of hate, we need to think about our kindness campaign differently: we need to ramp up our commitment to kindness instead of feeling like we checked the kindness box.
We hit on the idea of asking people who participated in, enjoyed, or supported the Year of Kindness to sign up to make kindness a lifestyle choice, a forever promise. We will have 17YOK banners circulating around the community that you can sign as a symbolic way of embracing kindness in your life. The banners will be at schools and other public locations. Look out for the kickoff of the Kindness Commitment at Juneau’s Public Market today and throughout that weekend. If you have an event between today and Dec. 30, email 17YOK@juneaupolice.com with the details and a steering committee member will bring a banner for people to sign.
The banners will be displayed at the final 17YOK event, which will be Dec. 31 at Thunder Mountain High School from 1-5 p.m. You will also have a last chance to sign up for a lifestyle of kindness that afternoon. The Steering Committee intends to hang the banners like a 3D art piece, so people can walk through and be surrounded by commitments to kindness.
Please continue to send us acts of kindness at that 17yok@juneaupolice.com! Let’s finish the year strong!
• Aaron Surma is a Juneau resident since 2016 who works with mental health organizations (including JAMHI) to add new services. Aaron is a member of the 2017 Year of Kindness Steering Committee. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.
