Help others

Helpful Hemi

Hello,

I’m Helpful Hemi!

Helping others and making the world a better place makes you feel good. There are plenty of people you can help – at school, at home, in your whanau, or your community.

Helping others is good because:

  • It makes you feel good too!
  • It helps the person you’re helping to have a good day
  • It produces endorphins, your brain’s natural painkiller!
  • It reduces anxiety and makes you calmer
  • Helping others increases your energy
  • It makes you more aware of other people, and puts you in their shoes
  • Everyone likes helpful people!
  • It puts more kindness out into the world

Click on these ideas

Donate!

Do you have any good toys or books you don’t use anymore? Donate them to a charity or an op shop.

Get involved in a fundraiser!

Collect cans for the City Mission or run a sausage sizzle to raise funds for a cause you believe in. There are so many fun ways to get involved!

 

Help at home

Wash the dinner dishes, set the table, unload the dishwasher or fold the laundry.  There are so many ways you can help around the house.

Get creative

Use the kindness generator!

Make friends with somebody new

Everyone can be a friend! Be friendly and kind to those around you.

Write a letter

Write a heartfelt letter to someone important to you.

Help someone do the shopping

Be the runner and collect items off your shopping list!

Do some gardening

Plant some seeds or help out by pulling out weeds! Check with an adult first to make sure you don’t pull out plants instead!

Want more ideas?

2-in1 activities

General activities

Get two challenges ticked off at once!

Physical activity + help someone

  • Wash the car
  • Hang out the washing
  • Clean some of the house, inside and out
  • Mow the lawn
  • Tidy the garden
  • Vegetable gardening
  • Choose a game from this website
  • Walk, bike, skateboard or scoot to a friend’s house
  • Try and spot ways you can share what you have. Are there lots of flowers you could give to someone?
  • Pick an activity from the sparklers website
  • Give someone a massage
  • Do some household chores
  • Make your bed
  • Do some gardening
  • Volunteer your time to someone who needs it
  • Visit a neighbour—especially if they are elderly and might be lonely
  • Help solve a problem for someone

 

Physical activity + stretch your mind

  • Learn to ride a bike
  • Learn to throw a ball
  
Healthy Heroes

Help others

Parent Information

Encourage your child to be able to see opportunities where they can help, without it needing to be pointed out to them. 

  • See these 8 tips to help make household chores learning experiences for kids
  • This article has some ways to encourage your kids to acts of kindness

Sparklers has great activity ideas for kindness, including compliment posters, and kindness cards

Our friends at All Right? have the following tips (see the full website here)

There are mountains of research on the benefits of being kind. Here are some of our faves from our Random Acts of Kindness friends overseas:

The positive effects of kindness are experienced in the brain of everyone who witnessed the act, improving their mood and making them significantly more likely to “pay it forward.” This means one good deed in a crowded area can create a domino effect and improve the day of dozens of people!

Engaging in acts of kindness produces endorphins, the brain’s natural painkiller!

Doing acts of kindness reduces anxiety. During four weeks, University of British Columbia researchers assigned people with high levels of anxiety to do kind acts for other people at least six times a week. The researchers found that doing nice things for people led to a significant increase in people’s positive moods. It also led to an increase in relationship satisfaction and a decrease in social avoidance in socially anxious individuals.

Helping others increases energy! About half of participants in one study report that they feel stronger and more energetic after helping others; many also reported feeling calmer and less depressed, with increased feelings of self-worth.

People who volunteer live a longer more satisfied life.

Giving makes us feel happy. A 2008 study by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton and colleagues found that giving money to someone else lifted participants’ happiness more that spending it on themselves (despite participants’ prediction that spending on themselves would make them happier).

Being kind isn’t rocket science – we all do it everyday. But as it’s so beneficial, and so contagious, we thought we’d come up with a few tips and ideas so you can incorporate even more kindness into your day.

  • Organise a ‘rescue package’ for a friend who needs a pick me up
  • Give a smile away!
  • Give someone a call or send an old school letter
  • While driving, stop to let a car into the traffic.
  • Offer to mow the grass verge of your neighbour.
  • Donate old toys, books, sports equipment, clothes etc to a local charity.
  • Help with school working bees and fundraisers.
  • Offer to help an older neighbour with their wheelie bins on rubbish/recycling days.
  • Give a compliment – acknowledge what someone in your life has done well.
  • Give away some baking
  • Check out this kindness mini mission