BEMIDJI-Recipes for jello cake and corn soup are two of Dee Roberts' favorites.
The Voyageurs Expeditionary حلحلآ» junior and 11 other students in the school's book club have handed out more than 100 cookbooks filled with homemade favorites at Bemidji-area grocery stores this week. They hope to run out of their supply of 250 by the weekend.
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The students are observing "Kindness Week" at the school, and it's the culmination of a project that began in December when club members read "Random Acts of Kindness," a collection of stories and questions about spontaneous generosity that bills itself as "an antidote for a weary world."
At Voyageurs, that's meant bringing cookies to Bemidji's police and fire departments, donating books to the library, and hand-delivering thank-you notes and small gifts to post office workers, senior center residents, and staff at Bemidji State University's American Indian Resource Center. Students in the book club have also written their own stories in the style of the book, detailing ways they've given or received kindness, or just witnessed it in action.
The cookbook is filled with those sorts of stories: strangers pitching when a student was a few bucks-or even a quarter-short on a grocery bill, or purchasing an art kit after overhearing a student admire it the week before their birthday. Another student recalled an outburst at a new school and the classmate who reached out afterward and became their first friend there.
"Even by us taking a moment of our time we can change someone's day," said Becky Kummet, a high school math instructor at Voyageurs who also teaches the club, which is a full-fledged class there.
