This is a weekly newsletter called Quiet Good Of The Week. It's about small, genuine acts of kindness out in the real world. Each issue has 5 short write-ups of real kindness news stories, plus one "kindness suggestion of the week." If someone forwarded you this email, sign up here. If you're already signed up, share it with others.
A 13-year-old in Utah spent his entire summer on a single project: a custom wheelchair for a toddler he'd never met. That felt like a good place to start this week.
This week's quiet good idea
Do one kind thing for someone today, and actively don't tell anyone about it. Just let it be a thing that happened. I've tried this, and I'll be honest: it's harder than it looks. There's this pull to mention it somehow, like the act isn't quite complete until someone else knows about it. But sitting with it quietly, just between you and whoever you helped? That might actually be the whole point.
300 Hours of Summer, Well Spent
📷 Zac Waters works on his 3D-printed wheelchair for a 21-month-old girl in Lehi, Utah. Photo: abc4.com
Zac Waters is 13 years old, lives in Lehi, Utah, and found a nonprofit called MakeGood that makes 3D-printed assistive devices for people who need them. So he decided to spend his summer building one: a custom wheelchair for a 21-month-old girl he'd never met. Three hundred hours later, the chair was done: pink accents (her favorite color), a removable cupholder and tray table, storage for medical equipment, adjustable footrest and headrest. "It combines my two favorite things in life," Zac said. "3D printing and helping people in need. It just makes sense."
The Keyboard She'll Always Have With Her
📷 Jessica Fletcher shows the keyboard tattooed on her arm, which her son Hunter uses to spell out words and communicate. Photo: CP24
Jessica Fletcher's 11-year-old son Hunter is autistic and nonverbal, and he normally uses an AAC tablet to communicate. One day the tablet died at a restaurant. Hunter grabbed a piece of paper, drew a keyboard on it, and "typed" his food order by pointing to the letters. Jessica, a mom from Fredericton, New Brunswick, saw what her son just improvised on his own, and went home and got a keyboard permanently tattooed on her arm. Letters, numbers, a smiley face, an "I heart you" button. Now wherever they go, Hunter can just point. "Technology does fail us," she said. This doesn't.
They Didn't Know Her. Didn't Matter.
📷 The new farm stand built by John and Casey Adams for Katrina Blancaflor's K's Bakestand in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Photo: NBC 10 WJAR
Katrina Blancaflor and her husband Ian spent months building a roadside farm stand for their home bakery, K's Bakestand, in Cumberland, Rhode Island. On July 4th at 2 a.m., someone drove up in an SUV and stole the whole thing, just 24 hours after they'd installed it. Katrina posted about it on social media, and John Adams, who runs a local construction company with his son Casey, saw it. They reached out, got the original blueprints, and rebuilt the entire stand from scratch, no charge. Their own tools got stolen while they were working on it. They kept going. "It's how it should be," Casey said. "You're a community. You gotta look out for each other."
The Froot Loops Dance
📷 The resource center in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Photo: KTUL
Alan Thompson was delivering groceries to a family in Muskogee, Oklahoma during the pandemic when he dropped a bag. A kid named Red spotted the Froot Loops that fell out and, by Thompson's account, "did about a two-minute dance." That was it. That was the moment. Thompson went home and posted on social media asking neighbors to leave food donations on his front porch. He came home one Saturday to find the entire porch covered. That was the beginning of the Miracle Crew, which now runs a full resource center in Muskogee: food, clothing, mental health connections, employment help. Nearly six years in, Thompson still starts every morning ready. "You don't need a million dollars' worth of equipment or beautiful buildings to help somebody," he said. "Start by helping your neighbor."
He Had Two. Someone Else Had None.
📷 Dave Bell, dressed in his Santa hat, at Henrico Doctors' Hospital in Virginia before his kidney donation surgery. Photo: Good News Network / WTVR
Dave Bell has spent years playing Santa Claus for kids in Powhatan, Virginia, showing up at Christmas to make children feel loved and seen. This summer, he gave something that had nothing to do with the holidays. Bell donated one of his kidneys to a stranger. To qualify as a donor, he lost 40 pounds first. Then he went to Henrico Doctors' Hospital, had the surgery, and wore a Santa hat in his hospital bed for the photo. He still doesn't know who received the kidney. His explanation for all of it: "I have two of these things, and I only need one. There's somebody who has none and they need one." Nothing more complicated than that.
That's five for this week. None of them planned to be a story. They just did the thing. That's always been the part that gets me.
Talk soon,
Matt