Local Acts of Kindness Foundation’s kindness therapy is a program where cancer survivors help patients through the same illness by offering connection and understanding.
“The basis of Local Acts of Kindness is about connection with people,” said Nancy DiPasquale, co-founder and president of the nonprofit. “People need connection, people need people, and sometimes we have inspiring thoughts that pop into our heads and we (go) with it.”
With kindness therapy, cancer survivors share their own personal journeys through the illness via anonymous emails and/or letters that offer connection and understanding to local patients.
According to localacts.org, the nonprofit reaches out to the community requesting emails and letters from those who want to share their personal cancer experience and insights, anonymously if desired. Once they’re received, the foundation will make the correspondence accessible to those undergoing treatment at Virtua Samson Cancer Center in Moorestown.
“Everybody wants to help in a situation where help is needed, but they just don’t know how to help, necessarily,” DiPasquale noted. “Even when there’s no help needed, people like to be connected. They like to do group projects, but not everybody comes up with an idea to do it.”
The idea for the kindness therapy program came to DiPasquale through the foundation’s Kind R’ Us drive, a toy collection for St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
“ … The thought of the name ‘kindness therapy’ popped into my head, and I said, ‘You know what? These people (Samson patients) would benefit from being connected to others, but it’s such a hush-hush thing that people don’t really talk about, unless you’re close to someone.”
The program also honors World Cancer Day on Feb. 4, an event that has spawned a positive moment for everyone, everywhere to unite under one voice and face one of the greatest challenges in history. Although DiPasquale has not been through chemotherapy personally, she does know others who have. She believes that because she cannot relate the same as someone going through chemotherapy, this is where Kindness Therapy can help.
“If someone can tell them (cancer patients) how they feel emotionally or how they felt emotionally, and the things that helped them, that would be really helpful to people who are going through it at the time,” DiPasquale offered.
“People are certainly grateful, too, when you go through something, and you can identify with it, and you can share that experience with them,” she added. “Then they know they’re not alone.”
DiPasquale noted how even though cancer is difficult for people to talk about, its survivors all around the world can greatly help patients by sharing their stories and experiences.
“If it wasn’t so personal and such a sensitive topic, we would think more people would be talking about it,” DiPasquale said, “but nobody really likes to share health issues and that’s understandable …
“But just think about the staggering number of people who have gone through this already … and how much comfort they can provide to someone who’s currently going through it.”
To find out more about kindness therapy, visit https://localacts.org.
“No one knows what people are going through, ever, in any given moment,” DiPasquale concluded. “If you come upon a person in a certain way at a certain time, you could really, truly mean the difference.”
