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

More than 11,000 people have already shared their random acts of kindness on kindness.yahoo.com. Here are some of our favorites so far.

Amy Mascott from Brookeville, MD has been secretly providing a struggling single mom of three, who has no family in the US, with a different gift card each week until Christmas.  She is leaving gift cards in this mom’s mailbox for things she needs but cannot afford herself including cards for groceries, pharmacy items, shoes, and toys.

Jerry James Stone of San Francisco, CA is baking as many loaves of bread as he can with $100 to deliver to the homeless on December 11^th.  His goal is to inspire his social network to join the effort, and in total bake 500 loaves of bread.

Rebecca Levey from New York, NY paid the co-pay at her ophthalmologist’s office for a fellow patient who responded with tears of appreciation.

You can also read more about individuals across America who have conducted inspiring acts and created a big ripple of kindness, on Yahoo!’s Year in Review 2010 website.

Inspired to spread kindness?  Share your act of kindness on kindness.yahoo.com to see how big of a ripple you can create.

-Connie Chan, Manager, Yahoo! for Good

As part of Yahoo!’s “You in?” program to spread random acts of kindness, we headed out on Christmas Eve to make a positive impact on the Quincy, Washington community. We handed out 50 – (16 piece) boxes of chicken and jojo’s plus a box of fresh baked cookies to those standing in line at the local food bank. Then we loaded back up at the store with more chicken and cookies and went to the labor camps where the real need is. Most of these are located 5-10 miles out of town. We went house to house (trailer to trailer). Two ladies started crying…and one hugged my husband and me over and over. It was very touching.

Then today the guys went out with another van full of food and delivered it to some other areas we couldn’t get to on Christmas Eve. We also took bags of stuff we were told that most request at the food bank. Bread, cereal, peanut butter and beans. So we gave them a box of chicken, jojo’s and a bag with other necessities in it.

What we were so surprised to see is that many don’t have transportation to even get to the food bank in town. I think that is why they were so touched. We are going to go out and do it again tomorrow and target another area.

Also while we were waiting for chicken at Akins Deli we randomly walked around the busy store and eyed people shopping that looked like they could use a little help (monetary wise). We notified the sales clerks to charge their groceries at checkout to our account and hand them a kindness card that encourages them to “pay it forward” by doing something nice for someone else. We weren’t around to see but I heard there were 6 really happy and grateful families.

The surprising part to this whole story is that when I went up for communion on Christmas Eve at our church, our pastor said to me, “Lisa, I saw firsthand the way you and your company touched someone’s life today. Thank you for doing that. God Bless you.” I went back to my seat wondering what he was talking about. After church he told me that he was witness to one of the store charges and could see what a truly unexpected gift it was for a family that he could see desperately needed it and it touched him as well.

I wish my children could have seen the woman cry over being given chicken, jojo’s and cookies. It would have given them perspective as to how well they have it and how sometimes it’s not what or how much you give……it’s just the act of caring about those less fortunate and wanting to make a small difference in other people’s lives.

This was a truly moving experience, and I’m so thankful to be able to participate in this You In? campaign. I have NEVER been more proud to work at Yahoo!

I’m so touched to see that these random acts of kindness really are spreading around the world. Nearly 300,000 people have already added their kind acts to the map at kindness.yahoo.com. To add yours or find more inspiration, check out kindness.yahoo.com.