Elaine's Pay it Forward

Part One: What is "Pay it Forward"?

After seeing this inspiring movie, I realized how important it is to pay it forward. It is important to pay it forward because it just doesn't make a difference on the person you helped but rather the whole world. This movie sends a strong message to many people and I am glad to have seen this movie because it's going to inspire me to do the same thing Trevor did. For me, paying it forward means helping a person and asking them to help another person which will result in making a difference in our world. By doing this, people will realize that it's time to do something to help make a difference. This is certainly something I am willing to do and I will attempt to get others involved as well.

Part Two: Our Act of Kindness

Our group involved four people, Binesi, Mary Jane, Faye, and I. For our act of kindness, we decided to make bracelets and sell them to help get a polio vaccination for a community in Africa. We were very fortunate to get a spot at the book fair to sell the bracelets. We completed our act of kindness during the parent teacher conference which was on Thursday night and Friday morning/afternoon.

Part Three: The Experience

I thought that our act of kindness went fantastic. Our goal was to sell all of the bracelets and raise $175.00. I was so happy to have reached our goal and knowing that we helped a community in Africa put a smile on my face.

At first I was afraid that no one would buy our bracelets and so we wouldn't be able to raise enough money. In case that happened, we were prepared to do something else but I wasn't ready to give up. Our sale was going slow at first but none of us wanted to give up. To make our sale go a bit faster, we decided to make posters and walk around the hallways to see if we could get more people interested in buying our bracelets. Along the way, there were many people who stopped to read our sign and asked "what does pay it forward mean"? We briefly told them what it meant and I was pretty sure those people stopped by the library to check out our merchandise. To get even more people interested, we decided to ask for requests of what color the customer would like their bracelet to be and that we would customize it for them. Many people bought our merchandise including teachers, parents, students, and even the staff in the office. At the end I thought it was a very successful experience and we managed to reach our goal of $175.00.

As we were doing our act of kindness, I felt good about what we were doing. I had that warm feeling that everyone said that we would get and it made me smile. I was so happy to know that we were actually going to help the community in Africa and help them live a better life. I'm sure that the rest of the group had the same feeling I had. Hopefully the people who bought our bracelets payed it forward. I would certainly like to do this again and this is an experience I will never forget.

I would like to give special mention to the people who helped out which were: Sharmaine, Jerick, and Noelle. I would like to thank them for helping us achieve our goal and hopefully they had fun.

Part Four: Why is this important?

The idea of pay it forward is important because it will make a difference in our world. By this I mean that you will not just help someone out because you are expecting something in return. You do this because you want to help make a difference and put a smile into people's faces without getting anything in return.

I think that our act of kindness has made a difference because we didn't just do it because we were asked to but rather because we wanted to. Hopefully the community in Africa will now live a better life and that we were able to put a smile on each and everyone of their faces.