No matter how you shake it it makes for a powerful visual for a giving spirit in the community.
Late last month we told you about a great little pay-it-forward initiative from the folks at Chez Angela. A ‘Kindness Coffee’ board had been setup, providing visitors to the bakery/cafe an opportunity to anonymously buy a warm drink for a future visitor. When buying, the purchaser shares a note of who the coffee is bought for and that note is tacked up on the board that you see in the pic attached to this post. When a person comes in that matches, Chez Angela hooks them up with their drink.
There’s been one ‘challenge’ if you want to call it that. Since the board went up four weeks ago there’s been an inspiring amount of generosity and giving and that’s at times out-numbered the level of receiving. Folks with the bakery tell me that close to 100 have been bought and about half of that claimed.
That’s led to folks at the bakery working their magic to best fit everything in including sometimes having to overlap notes on top of others. Initiative has since been taken in greeting visitors and encouraging them to take one for themselves of perhaps even a friend which has started to make connections in the cycle of giving and receiving.
Folks will have their own opinions on why claiming a drink still has room to grow in comparison to offering one, perhaps stemming back to the idea that in ‘friendly Manitoba’ our modest selves sometimes need an extra nudge to accept praise or a little pick-me-up. Or maybe the right match for the right note simply hasn’t found their way into the bakery yet in a lot of cases.
The long and short of it is, the generosity looks good on you Brandon... and if you happen to be thirsty and in need of a pick-me-up your chances of coming out of Chez Angela with a freebie are quite a bit better this week than they were at the start of the month!