How it works.
Our mission is to fuel kindness and connection in Kāpiti to enable our community to take greater care of both self and others.
We all experience challenges with our mental health at various times in our lives. Times when the wheels feel a bit wobbly and we need to reset our compass.
This is normal, you are not alone and there are plenty of resources out there to help.
At the Kāpiti Kindness Trust, we believe that kindness and connection is one of the biggest things we can all do to support ourselves and community when things get tough.
There are a number of different ways we do this:
- We encourage kindness
First and foremost, kindness starts with each of us.
You don’t have to spend money. Being kind costs nothing.
Perhaps you might help someone in the supermarket struggling to reach that top shelf. Maybe someone needs help with their bags into the car. Maybe you could mow your neighbour’s berm while you’re out doing yours, it’ll save them a job, or take out their bins.
Small acts of kindness, no matter how small, helps others in ways that might surprise you. Not only will the recipient benefit, but you will feel better, as ours brains release chemicals associated with doing good. Being kind to others is also proven to help reduce stress, and ease anxiety.
Recognising the warning signs in yourself when things are starting to wobble is also really important part of being kind to yourself. The secret to good mental health is resilience, which comes from knowing yourself.
We all have little things that brings us joy. It’s often something that might not be overly useful and usually gets sacrificed when we’re under stress. Be kind to yourself by prioritising your health and your joy – this is your resilience and how you can help others.
- We celebrate kindness in our community
We love seeing kindness in our community and want to celebrate and share those stories!
Has someone you know been extraordinarily kind? Nominate them for our monthly Kapiti Kindness Trust kindness award.
We’ve teamed up with Kapiti Goodies to provide an awesome gift hamper each month for someone in our community to recognise their kindness.
Let’s reward those who help others! We just need to know who you are nominating, what they have done or do to help others and how we can get in touch.
You can message us on our Facebook page, or on our website.
- We fund kindness for those in need
Our premise is simple but powerful – there are 55,000 people living in the Kāpiti district and if every person donated $2 a month, you’d have $1.3 million a year that could go towards resetting our community’s mental health compass through kindness.
Thanks to the generosity of our community so far, we are launching a trial of a Kindness Prescription which offers financial assistance to those in need.
A Kindness Prescription is an investment in your strengthening mental wellbeing. It may be for something that might not usually be deemed ‘essential’ by the usual support funders like yoga lessons, or a cooking class or a meditation session.
These are the things that make us feel good and give us the mental space to step back and take a deep breath, which ultimate strengthens our resilience.
So how does it work?
We are currently trialling this initiative.
We are encouraging local community groups to nominate those in their networks that may benefit from a Kindness Prescription.
We want to know a little bit about the nominee, how a Kindness Prescription could positively impact on the person’s mental health and some suggestions on what activities the Prescription could cover.
If successful, we will get in contact with the nominee and help them decide what activity or action might best help reset their compass.
Watch this space – you’ll hear more on this from us shorty!