‘Show us your RAK’: Random Acts of Kindness take Londoners by surprise

A group of Londoners participated in a day of doing random acts of kindness. CTV London’s Brent Lale explains.

An orange wave made its way through London asking people to “show us your RAK”.

On the third annual Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) Day, those at Project IMPACK were spreading joy.

“We’re out on a mission to turn random acts of kindness into regular acts of kindness,” said Angie Reeves, vice president of Project IMPACK and team leader at the Mylie Group.

With the believe that kindness has the power to chance how people feel, they surprised many people.

“We’re going to go out and give high fives, hugs, pet dogs, give compliments buy flowers and coffee and try to make peoples day”.

In their opening stop in Wortley Village, they made their way north to the London Bicycle Café.

“Random act to kindness is actually just a small part of what we do,” said Storm Fletcher, president of Project IMPACK.

“The Mylie Group and Project IMPACK took care of 250 families this year. Not just food but Christmas presents, wish lists and food. A lot of the sponsor contributions and donations go towards that annually as well”.

From there, they made their way to Covent Garden Market. They bought coffee, flours, gave out dog treats. A special gift was to a homeless man named Phil who received a strawberry smoothie on a hot day.

“Sir, you look very handsome over there,” said Reeves through a megaphone.

“I’m talking to you Sir. The handsome one over there. Nice mustache!”.

“It’s an interesting kind of social experiment, to be honest with you,” added Reeves.

“People are just a little bit skeptical of it, but it’s beautiful to watch it change when they realize that it’s just a moment and that it makes our heart happy. It fills us with so much joy”.

The small gestures create a lasting impact and members of Project IMPACK say RAK is now a movement.

“Sometimes it’s like ‘We want to give you something and they are like OK, what’s the catch?” said Fletcher.

“It’s actually so cool when you witness it that they don’t we don’t want anything. That is actually I think the best part of this is when they are completely taken aback that we didn’t want anything except to spread joy and spread kindness”.