Kindness Matters

Village Partners International is pleased to incorporate Kindness Matters as one of our new missions. This outreach to the homeless in the Tampa Bay area grew out of a need seen by Team 211, a team training for breast cancer awareness walks.

The majority of the teams’ members had walked this journey of breast cancer, or traveled it with one they love. As part of their wish to give back, they became more than just a training team; they became a group of individuals who believed in spreading kindness/

During their training walks, they could not ignore those whom they found on the streets; those who lay sleeping beneath the bridges, trying to stay cool in the summer months, or warm as the winter came.

The invisible, the unseen…yet people like each of those who walked.

This was brought home as the team was given the gift of knowing one who was part of this homeless world, yet who was able to receive care, and caring for their cancer because of the compassion of members of this team.

Traveling to Philadelphia, walking in the cold miserable rain, members were struck by the faces of the homeless seen there. Sharing coffee and food with those on the streets, they walked their miles. The gratitude of those seen and recognized demonstrated the importance of seeing all those often invisible in our society today.

From this began the Kindness Matters walks. These initially began monthly, where bags were packed with food, socks, scarfs, blankets, water , and later expanded to books, glasses, shoes, coffee, tea and hot chocolate, and other needed items, with time spent talking to each person encountered and recognizing their importance, their individual stories.

With the Pandemic these walks were expanded to distribution of gift cards on the off weeks, allowing those encountered the ability to obtain the items they most need.

By seeing the invisible, the members of this now expanded group have discovered not only the friendship of those they encounter, but also something inside themselves, and recognize the importance of simple kindness.

For Kindness Matters Always.

you lay

you lay upon the hard cold bench
covered in the tattered blanket.
you lay.
quietly sleeping in the dawn.
you lay.
your face covered in wrinkles as the
tracks of your hard life tell the tale in the story written there.
you lay upon the cold hard concrete bench serving as your bed.
you lay.
people pass by
running
biking
carrying on their morning
not seeing you as you are invisible
not part of their world, not part of their life.
not knowing the path that you have walked.
I wonder as you lay there and I look back,
seeing your face hidden beneath the green blanket.
what was your life like?
once you were a child held gently at your mothers’ breast
loved, cherished, running as you grew
laughter coming from your ruby lips
curls circling your face
your chubby hands holding onto some treasure that you had found.
now you lay on the cold hard bench
and I
I wonder what has brought you to this place, this moment,
this day
what path have you walked
what world has been presented to you
how would you answer if I said
for you, what does tomorrow hold?
as you lay sleeping quietly
invisible
yet your existence screaming to me
as you lay
on this hard cold bench this early dawn.
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