2018 is Here and so is 30 Days of Kind!

From tomorrow 2nd January 2018 we will be running an amazing 30 Day kindness challenge on Instagram and Facebook and in our fabulous 30daysofkind Facebook Group. We want YOU to come and join in too. This challenge has been designed with a group of 25 other amazing kind individuals who have helped create something that is easy, mostly cost free, requires minimum effort, is fun and most importantly will spread kindness for a whole month.

Why Kindness?

Our mission at Proper Post has always been to spread love and smiles – kindness is core to that. We dreamt up a fun way of spreading kindness last year when we had the idea to have a truck that was loaded with postcards, cards and letter writing goodies that could rock up and allow people to stop and write a letter to someone they love.

People could have a break and have a chat, think about someone they care about and write to them then. We would safely stamp it up and post it off for them by good old Royal Mail. The truck part meant it could go on tour and really spread love and smiles anywhere! It seemed like a long shot of a dream but slowly as 2017 took shape that dream became a reality bit by bit.

The Truck of Dreams

First we met the beautiful Nadia from Meraki and she had the truck of dreams! Fully kitted out as a gift truck it was a ready made stationery haven to store everything needed to make the letter writing travelling grotto a real actual thing! We imagined chairs and tables sat outside the van and people sitting writing letters of love and telling us their stories for us all to enjoy. Thinking of all the love and kindness it would spread was almost too much happiness to cope with.

PenPals

Then we stumbled into the path of Laura and Claire from Twins that Travel and discovered our shared dream of connecting people by letter and we formed our Paper Planes penpals group on Facebook and paired up penpals from all over the world. All the pieces were starting to fall into a travelling letter writing DREAM.

Instagram

Being invited to the #wemadeit event at Instagram set the next part into motion when we met Instagram Co-founder Mike Kreiger. Our first conversation was all about swearing (what else would it be about) and we got our FFS pin straight on to that man’s lapel. Then we got deeper and moved on to the dream of the travelling letter writing truck of dreams.

He loved the idea and in September 2017 on Southbank in London it became a reality where we hosted an event with Instagram for WWIM16 and hundreds of people wrote messages of kindness that were posted to their loved ones or displayed. We decked out Meraki’s truck and bought letter writing kindness to the streets for the first time.

 

Mini Challenge

That event sparked a desire in us to spread kindness more and inspired us to develop a 30 Day Challenge for Instagram and Facebook all centred around being kind, and inspiring kindness in others. The interest right from the start, blew us away as 25 people volunteered to be part of a focus group where we worked together to find tasks that were easy to do.

Not your usual arty creative instagram challenge, not one that you had to put loads of preparation into and take beautifully styled pics that took hours to arrange. The perfection of our challenge is in the imperfection. The tasks in the challenge are doable, easy and fun, they don’t involve much cost and the effort is minimal but the rewards are maximum.

So, on World Kindness Day in November we launched our Mini 5 Day challenge to get us all warmed up for the big event which kicks off tomorrow (2.1.2018) and our already strong Facebook group grew and grew. What started out as a fun little project that came from our event with Instagram in London back in September has grown into something so much more with now over 620 members in our Facebook Group. You can see some of the amazing kindness that was shared during that mini 5 day challenge by checking out the Instagram posts for the hashtag #30daysofkind here

#30daysofkind

So it’s finally here, the big one – the full 30 Day Challenge. We chose January because it is usually such a sucky month and what better way to counteract the suck than by being kind.

Starting tomorrow (2.1.18) we have 30 days of lovely, easy, fun tasks to get you spreading and experiencing kindness. It won’t take you long and you don’t have to stick to it rigidly. We would love you to do the full 30 days but if you can’t then no pressure. Dip in and out as and when you can or go for the full whack and tick off all 30 days either is fine!

How it works

Each day we will post a new challenge task on our Instagram feed and stories and also on Facebook. Get involved in whichever way you like, take pics, tag us in the pics @properpostuk and use the hashtags #properpost and #30daysofkind.

It isn’t a competition but for people who do complete the tasks every day we will be watching and showing you some love of our own. We will be featuring your posts on our stories and feed and sharing your kindness.  You can share it with your friends and let everyone know about it.

FREE Printables

To make things even easier we have a 30 day calendar for you to print out and follow along and some gorgeous printables below to use to carry out some of the tasks.

Click the link to download ALL the Proper Post 30 Days of Kind Printables as a zip file with everything. Or you can click on each image below and then when it appears on a page on it’s own right click and “save image as” to download each image separately and then print them.

30 Day Calendar

Here are the full 30 days on a lovely calendar. Print it out on A4 card or paper and put it up by your computer or stick it on the fridge and get the kids involved too (we do have a set of kids challenges coming soon too that are tailored to specific age groups). Tick off the days or place a happy sticker on the ones you have managed to do.

Little Notes of Kindness

These lovely notes of kindness were designed for us by the amazing Apartment 406 Designs and were part of the mini challenge back in November you can download them in different colours and read the whole article here. You can use these on any of the days but they are especially suited to Day 15 and Day 17.

Hero Postcard

This double sided A6 postcard has been specially designed for Day 9. Choose your hero and write on the postcard why you have chosen them and then fill in their address and post it off or personally present it to them. Four of these will fit on an A4 sheet of card then flip it over and print the reverse.

Pledge Voucher

This beauty is for Day 4 but you could pretty much use it any day to make a happy or kind pledge to help someone, or you could even write one to yourself. Again this beauty is A6 so you will get 4 to one sheet of A4 and then print the Pledge Voucher title on the reverse.

Compliment Strips

Probably our fave creation for this challenge these amazing compliment strips are perfect to print out and pop up anywhere you think people could do with some kindness. They are for Day 21 but again you could use these any day for spreading general joy and kindness. We have given you two choices here with either the set with 10 compliments we have pre designed, OR a blank version where you can write your own 10 compliments to print off and pin up.

These gorgeous sheets have been designed in A5 size so you will get two to an A4 piece of paper. Or go large and print them as A4 and really stand out.

 

Watch the Magic Unfold

We will be posting the challenge tasks every morning so don’t forget to come and join in over on Instagram and Facebook and remember to tag us in all your pics, the more we share the more this will grow and what better thing to go viral than kindness.

If you want to get mega in the mood and get some wearable Kindness Merch we have a gorgeous Kindness Lapel pin. Or we even have a Kind Sweatshirt with 50% of the profits going to the charity Post Pals voted for by our Facebook group

Kindness is a double whammy YOU feel great for spreading the kindness and the person who receives the kindness feels amazing too and then they in turn are probably inspired to pass on more kindness. So it’s like one giant feedback loop of happiness that spreads like a happy virus.