Spreading Kindness

In the week commencing Monday 16th March 2020, the Coronavirus outbreak was starting to feel like a very real threat at home in the UK. Whilst schools were still open as usual, vulnerable people were being asked to stay at home, with signs the virus was beginning to spread. There was a growing realisation that soon we would all be asked to stay at home, including most school children, and a gnawing fear that many people might become ill, or even die.  

On Tuesday 17th March, The Big Think team agreed to write a quick-turnaround Assembly and Lesson before schools closed - we wanted to support school staff and pupils with their growing anxiety about Coronavirus and the life-changing implications for us all. 

The Big Think authors, Maisie Chan and Avantika Taneja, collaborated on a factual story ‘Spread Kindness’ about children from around the world showing acts of kindness during the global outbreak. They sourced tender examples of how children in other countries ahead of the UK in the outbreak, had offered acts of kindness to their communities to keep everyone going. 

Galia Pike, The Big Think illustrator, quickly produced a drawing of a boy holding his rainbow poster like the children in Italy. Our graphic designer, Rob Bowden, managed to compile our Journal page from Self-Isolation in Tallinn. And Sarah Pengelly, The Big Think Curriculum Developer, created a Values Inquiry asking the question: Are you kind to others even when you are feeling worried? and using scenarios such as worrying about vulnerable family members the children wouldn’t be able to visit, people vying for supplies in supermarkets, running out of hand sanitiser and starting to hear about people dying.  

Now, a few weeks later, with most people at home in lockdown and keyworkers valiantly keeping our essential services going, we can see daily evidence of acts of kindness happening across Britain in the face of such worry.  Schools making masks for keyworkers, children making rainbow posters for their windows and newly constructed hospitals, neighbours keeping physically distant – but still making new contact socially with each other – dancing in the street or clapping the NHS.  We wondered how the UK would rise to this unprecedented challenge, and are astounded each and every day by the new acts of kindness shown to each other. 

Maybe these are early signs of a real and forever shift in how we unite as local, national and global communities to create kinder, more sustainable and equal societies for all. 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”

— Maya Angelou, American poet, award-winning author and civil rights activist (1928-2014)