This holiday season, Yahoo! started a generosity campaign to spread kindness around the world with one simple act. To start the ripple of kindness, Yahoo! gave $100 each to 400 internal and external influencers, and I was one of them. I received a $100 check in the mail from Yahoo that arrived with these marching orders:

• Do something nice for someone!
• Pass it on
• Inspire others
• Let us know what you did

I used my $100 check to purchase holiday gifts for Next Door Solutions, an agency here in Silicon Valley that safety for battered women and their children through emergency shelter; multiple points of entry for victims; individuals, system and institutional advocacy; crisis intervention; education for victims and the community.

Every year, the agency holds a special holiday party event for clients and their children. They do a gift drive for both children and their mothers. Presents are loaded into two rooms and the children get to pick out something special for their moms and moms get to pick out something for their children.

I used my $100 check to purchase beautiful ceramic beaded necklaces from Kazuri in Kenya. Kazuri is Swahili for "small and beautiful." The Kazuri factory is located in the rolling hills outside of Nairobi, Kenya. Here, these small handcrafted beads, made from African clay, are molded and painted by disadvantaged women of the Kikuyu Tribe.

Kazuri pays its employees three times the national wage in Kenya and provides free health care, day care, and educates workers on AIDs and Malaria. By purchasing these necklaces as gifts for women in Silicon Valley, it provides support for women in Kenya.

I got a tour of the facility where I noticed some beautiful handmade quilts hanging on the wall. I learned from Kaathleen Krenek, the executive director, that women and their children make the quilts together. She hopes to start a micro enterprise with the quilts that can help support the program and the women - something very similar to Kazuri.

My random act of kindness was to support women in San Jose by supporting women in Kenya. Your turn.

-Beth Kanter, Guest Blogger from Beth’s Blog