Video: Four Tupelo Seniors Are Using A Class Project To Spread Kindness

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI)-Each year Seniors at Tupelo High School are required to come up with an idea for one of their final projects.One group is using their idea to help spread kindness to strangers.

After watching the movie “Pay It Forward,” staring Haley Joel Osment and Helen Hunt, these four Tupelo High school seniors decided to encourage local residents to perform random acts of kindness throughout their day.

That’s when Blake Dixon and the other group members decided to make a few phone calls.

“We prepared a couple of weeks ago. We decided we’re going to need businesses help to get donations so we started calling businesses we had a Facebook page and we sort of shared our memo through that,” says Blake Dixon.

Within three weeks the students raised over one-thousand dollars to help fund their project. Karli Wood says these acts of kindness have left an impact.

“We’ve already gone to Tupelo Water and Light and we paid for someone’s bill that was about to get cut off and it turns out they have a son in Lebonheur and so that was really inspiring and touching to us,” says Karli Wood.

Dixon says he hopes those who received their kindness will continue the tradition.

“We want it to carry on everyday and we’re just hoping from the kindness of others hearts it makes them feel good helping others so they carry it on,” says Dixon.

Four teens may be spreading kindness throughout Tupelo but Steven Beckham, a Crossfit instructor at the Downtown Columbus YMCA, says he experienced an act of kindness here in the Golden Triangle.

“I usually bike around but I left my bike parked at church that day so I was walking and I had also left mu jacket in a friend’s car so a lady stopped and it was in the middle of rush hour traffic but she stopped and turned around and came back to get me,” says Steven Beckham.

The mysterious woman gave Steven a ride to his pick up his bike but that wasn’t the last of her kind gestures.

“It made me feel really good that a complete stranger I don’t even know her name she didn’t tell me who she was…she stopped and went out of her way to come back and give me a ride and then came back again with a jacket and gloves,” says Beckham.

So whether you are giving or receiving it’s important to remember to keep paying it forward.

The Malco movie in Tupelo will be showing the movie “Pay It Forward Thursday night at 7pm for only $3. All the donations raised will fund more random acts of kindness.