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| Website founder: Californian Debbie Tenzer created DoOneNiceThing.com in 2005 to chronicle her efforts to do a good deed for
someone once a week. Since then, she’s communicated with people in 53 countries about their own inspirations for making small
gestures to lend a helping hand. Courtesy of Debbie Tenzer |
DoOneNiceThing.com inspires do-gooders to keep it up
The website grew out of Debbie Tenzer's pledge to make a small gesture of kindness every Monday.
from the March 25, 2008 edition
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People were urged to send a large ziplock bag containing a notebook, pen, two pencils, a pencil sharpener, a healthy snack, and a small toy. Tenzer managed to get on Fox TV to talk about it. That helped open the floodgates.
"The project is still going, and people have sent 70 tons of school supplies so far," she says.
Maj. Sean Gustafson of the Minnesota National Guard – stationed near Herat from June 2006 to June 2007 and charged with training members of the Afghan Army and police – soon took on responsibility as Major Woodring's tour ended.
"There were about 350,000 school kids in the Herat sector," he says in a phone interview from Minneapolis. "They went to school six days a week even though they had nothing. Some sat outside on the dusty ground."
When supplies started arriving, the soldiers made three or four school visits per week to deliver a package to each child. "The response was always phenomenal, they were very grateful," he says.
Yet it wasn't wholly altruistic on the part of the soldiers involved, Major Gustafson hastens to add. These families had been told that Westerners wanted to convert or eradicate them. This kind of help affected their perspectives.
"We knew that happy people don't join the Taliban or become suicide bombers," Gustafson says. "The Koran is just as much against suicide bombing as Judaism or Christianity."
He even told an Afghan officer that Tenzer was Jewish and was spurring all this with no strings attached. "It kind of blew him away," he says.
DoOneNiceThing.com in fact ties directly into Tenzer's faith. As a child, she was taught in synagogue that if you do an act of goodness, you are helping God.
"I feel obligated to try to make the world a better place. In Judaism we call it Tikkun Olam, 'repairing the world,' " she explains. "We don't have to finish the job, but we have to get in the game."
She's thrilled to be able to help other people get in the game as well. She encourages those who have been helped to do a nice thing for others. The students at Jefferson Middle School sent hundreds of get-well cards to Tenzer to be distributed to children who were hospitalized.
"It helped them reach out to others when they saw how complete strangers came to our aid," Ms. Burkett says. "That builds up your faith in human nature, that people at their core are just good, caring folks."
Beyond the weekly projects, the website honors other individuals doing nice things on their own, whether big or small. For example, there's the Hollywood writer who vacationed in Tanzania and ended up creating a nonprofit group that built a home, school, and self-sustaining farm for abandoned children he met there.
Sharing these stories gives other people hope, Tenzer says. "The world is an imperfect place, and there's a lot to do and we can do."
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