21 episodes

Showing Kindness in Personal Ways... This is why the global volunteer movement of Serve the City International exists. Serving Stories shows how kindness is transforming cities around the world, one small act at a time, and brings you the inspiration to make a difference in the place where you live. Get ready to listen to stories that will give you hope, as you hear how "many people doing small things together can make a big difference."

Serving Stories – Serve the City International Serve the City

    • Business
    • 5.0 • 3 Ratings

Showing Kindness in Personal Ways... This is why the global volunteer movement of Serve the City International exists. Serving Stories shows how kindness is transforming cities around the world, one small act at a time, and brings you the inspiration to make a difference in the place where you live. Get ready to listen to stories that will give you hope, as you hear how "many people doing small things together can make a big difference."

    Compassion: A Hundred Thousand Welcomes

    Compassion: A Hundred Thousand Welcomes

    Cead mile failte: an Irish phrase that means "a hundred thousand welcomes." That is what Lucy Alexia Dube wants to offer new migrant parents coming to Ireland. Having been a refugee herself, she compassionately supports them in the midst of cultural transition—and sometimes prejudice—through STC Ireland's Cairdeas (Friendship) program. Come meet a lady numbered among the "Top 50 People to Watch in 2024" by the Irish Times.

    • 39 min
    Compassion: Kindness to Ukraine, Continued

    Compassion: Kindness to Ukraine, Continued

    Let's combat compassion fatigue! On the 2nd anniversary of the Ukraine war, Nikita and Artur, two refugees in Krakow, recount their stories—and how kindness became contagious for them.

    • 36 min
    Compassion: Nourishing Kindness in Paris

    Compassion: Nourishing Kindness in Paris

    Safi Ebrahim and Peter DeWitt, of Serve the City Paris, lay out for us how compassion can change the trajectory of the life of an immigrant. And Safi should know, as he himself came to Paris as a refugee from Afghanistan! He shares his journey of finding first the means of communication, and then a door to community, as he encountered Serve the City volunteers and became one himself. Be inspired by the stories these two remarkable people helpers as they recount the changes in people's lives, nourished through kindness.

    • 35 min
    Respect: In the Stockings of St. Nicholas

    Respect: In the Stockings of St. Nicholas

    What if giving gifts to those in need could boost self-respect instead of creating dependency? Saint Nicholas understood this when he gave money anonymously to an impoverished family to supply dowries that would allow their three daughters to marry and have a future. And Serve the City volunteers step in St. Nicholas' stockings—not just on Christmas, but throughout the year—when they recognize that people in need are also people who have something to give to the world. Maybe they just need a little help in being able to realize this potential.

    The two stories we bring you this Christmas week demonstrate this Saint Nicholas principle, of giving that empowers vulnerable people to give back to their community. The first is a real Christmas story, where Serve the City volunteers gave a gift TO Santa, and the second a tale of marginalized women given the opportunity to take initiative in their own impoverished community. Whether in Luxembourg or Nairobi, the path of Saint Nicholas is one we can walk all year!

    • 28 min
    Respect: No Longer Frozen in Shame

    Respect: No Longer Frozen in Shame

    In Krakow, Poland, as in many other big cities around the world, respectable people pretend the homeless person they pass on the street is invisible. There are, the respectable feel, so many reasons not to respect the man sleeping on the bench: alcoholism, lack of a job, grubbiness, asking for handouts. And if he doesn't seem to respect himself, why should they? So they pretend blindness... until it turns out that the man on the bench has frozen to death in the winter cold.

    In this episode (originally recorded in December 2020), we listen to a Christmas story from Krakow in which volunteers relate their experiences of deliberately seeing those who are usually invisible, and of how offering respect to those trapped in shame can change their lives. Many people living on the street exist cut off from their families, ashamed of what they have done or who they have become. As Brené Brown says, "Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” But in these stories, plus another short anecdote from STC Brussels, we learn that shame can be abolished and relationships restored as people are given respect instead of judgment.

    • 31 min
    Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones

    Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones

    It’s pretty easy to volunteer when you feel like the task you are doing is big and important. But when the job seems mundane and messy—maybe even smelly—some volunteers might hesitate. In Serve the City, however, volunteering with humility means we are not too proud to do the little things, and to clean up things that are are dirty. And this includes not just dirty streets, but dirty bits of history that pollute our cities. 

    This episode contains three stories from three continents in which people doing small, humble things together are making a big difference.  Our first story, from Lusaka, Zambia, features a massive crowd—including some people who might be considered too important for such tasks—who work together to clean their streets. In Berlin, Germany, the site of our second story, volunteers go down on their knees to clean, not just the streets, but a city's memories of persecution. And in Hampton, Virginia, in the USA, volunteers put their backs into paying respect to some long-dead residents who were not respected in their lifetimes.

    • 28 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
3 Ratings

3 Ratings

Lymf ,

Such moving stories

I really enjoy listening to these stories of people just helping others. It’s so moving!

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