Oxfordshire Kindness Wave – Hope, Love, Comfort and Kindness for young people
The team behind the Oxfordshire Kindness Wave explain how the idea of a kindness parcel was born, each containing a message of hope, creativity for comfort, kindness with chocolate and a specially made heart for love.
This guest post is published by the Rees Centre during the coronavirus pandemic.
This act of kindness started four weeks ago from a conversation with two campaigners, Maxine Sloss and Laura Beveridge, who champion creativity, equal rights for every child and young person. Their common belief is that all young people deserve the right to grow into adulthood with confidence, feeling happy and with a sense of belonging and love. Maxine and Laura, who both live and work in Edinburgh, met just a few weeks ago for the very first time (physically distanced of course). They began developing and facilitating a response to the pandemic, aiming to reach out to children, young people and families. The idea of The Kindness Wave was born.
The Kindness Wave was formed with four key components: hope, love, comfort and kindness. Studio LR designed the branding based on drawings by Laura’s 13-year-old sister and 7-year-old daughter. Each colour represents the favourite colours of four Kindness Wave writers who were the first to receive the parcels! This was truly a collective creation. Our logo symbolises hope, love, comfort and kindness that keeps the children and young people in mind.
Whilst we are all going through the Covid19 pandemic, our belief is that each parcel will contain a message of hope, creativity for comfort, kindness with chocolate and a specially made heart for love.
‘’Loved my Creative parcel I had something fun to do at home and just to be connected to my local community is everything’’ 15 year old young person.
As a Co-founder of Scotland’s Kindness Wave I worked alongside a collective of creatives, educators, youth workers, writers to set up our community of parcel makers here in Oxfordshire. The idea developed and we are now in partnership with Ark T, Alex Timpson Trust, Oxfordshire Virtual School, Oxford Hub, Oxford City Council, Cultural Education Partnership Arts Work and Populate Co-op. We are sending out creative parcels to our young people and aim to celebrate their creativity and resilience through our website. Local and national artists, writers and students are creating conversations and challenges that give young people much needed comfort and distraction, and provide opportunities to create happy moments during this challenging time.
Oxford and Edinburgh are two cities far apart. However, through this pandemic we have created a bond to support our children and young people with love, kindness, hope and comfort. We hope they can see the true power that they have. One truth is that we all are vulnerable right now, all of us are having our resilience tested and some more than others will experience adversity.
What matters right now is that we are all in this together, and have an opportunity to connect. It is important to note that all of the products in our parcels are locally sourced, many items handmade and created by creatives in our local communities.
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Written by George O’Shaughnessey on behalf of the team behind The Kindness Wave. Contact George.
This guest post is published by the Rees Centre during the coronavirus pandemic.