Serving Stories – Serve the City International Serve the City

For the year 2020, Serve the City chose as their theme, "Kindness Starts with Me." Little did they know how the events of this year would draw on the creativity of volunteers in showing kindness! In this episode, we hear stories from around the world (Geneva, Newport News, Nairobi, Accra, Paris, Luxembourg and South Jersey) about how they have seen a viral spread of kindness as a pandemic was being contained.

It's been a more than a good idea to stay inside during the COVID outbreak in Brussels— it's the law. But some residents have found that there are some important humanitarian reasons to venture out in the streets, motivated by compassion that fuels their courage.

As we revisit the first four cities in Season 1 — Lisbon, Chesapeake, Berlin and Tallinn — we find out that agility is everything. In each city, we discover how the expertise, partnerships, and concerns developed in everyday volunteering are being adapted to show kindness in this crisis—and the touching stories that result.

Serving Stories is a podcast from Serve the City. We travel around the world to gather stories of volunteers doing small things together that make a big difference. Each month, we feature people who cross lines of poverty, privilege and prejudice to raise the kindness quotient in their cities. In the first season we focus on six different cities—Lisbon, Chesapeake, Berlin, Tallinn, Brussels and Pristina—serving stories of transformation, both big and small.

In this episode (part 2 of 2), a simple project serving breakfast to migrants in a park turns into a city-wide humanitarian effort. And in the process, it changes not only the lives of migrants living precariously, but also the lives of the volunteers who sign up to serve them.

Kindness will not be cancelled! Events are cancelled, meetings are cancelled, but Serve the City believes that kindness is open for business and the shelves are stocked floor to ceiling with creative ideas! In this podcast, Carlton and Ani Deal discuss creative kindness.