NLYC Pay It Forward

New Lodge Youth Centre is challenging everyone to a simple act of kindness this Mental Health Awareness Week.

But there’s one catch.

When you take up the ‘pay it forward’ challenge, they ask that instead of sharing it on social media, that the person you do something nice for, in turn performs a random act of kindness for someone else.

The number of smiles on people’s faces are how its success will be measured, says senior youth worker, Sean Breen.

He told Belfast Live: “Ashton’s New Lodge Youth Centre is running a challenge throughout Mental Health Awareness week.

“The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness week is kindness and we are asking people to undertake random acts of kindness and then simply ask the recipient to ‘pay it forward’.

“To pay it forward means that all they ask for in return is that the recipient will undertake a random act of kindness with someone else and create a ripple effect of kindness throughout our community, city and who knows how far this could spread no matter how big or small the act.”

He said the club want to see how far the ripple of kindness will go. But they don’t want selfies, hashtags or publicity for the random acts of kindness.

Sean added: “We want people to focus on how good it feels to make someone happy, to help someone out and the impact that could have on the other person and let that be enough.

“Don’t use a hashtag, don’t post a status or a selfie about the act of kindness as we want the act of kindness to be the focus and not the publicity of the act.

“We are asking everyone to get involved and share [this] far and wide just to raise awareness of the challenge and to have the acts of kindness spreading all around at this difficult time.

“The measure of success for this challenge isn’t how many shares or likes we can gather on social media, it’s how many smiles can be placed onto people faces throughout our community, city and further afield.”