Good Deeds Day workshop at Kaohsiung City International Youth Volunteer Summer Camp, 2016. Photo courtesy Good Deeds Day
Good Deeds Day was initiated in 2007 by Shari Arison, and launched and organized by Ruach Tova, which is a function of The Ted Arison Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Arison Group.
“Participants take part in a variety of activities, from cooking meals for the homeless in Bondi Beach, Australia, to renovating a school building in Abuja, Nigeria.”
Good Deeds Day has grown from 7,000 participants in 2007 in Israel to some 1.5 million worldwide in 2016 in seventy-five countries around the world, volunteering and offering help to others. In Israel, participation reached an all-time high in cities, towns, communities, and more than a thousand schools all over the country.
Participants around the world take part in a wide variety of activities, from cooking and serving meals to the homeless in Bondi Beach, Australia, to helping to clean up a cemetery in Washington, D.C., from visiting the children’s ward of a hospital in Santiago, Chile, to helping to renovate a school building in Abuja, Nigeria. The programs are plentiful and productive, and a spirit of benevolence is at the center of it all. Even a smile can be a good deed.
Shari Arison, who was commended by Pope Francis in 2015, has a firm conviction that sending positive energies out—through Good Deeds Day and many other ventures—will better the world. She says: “I think there are so many good people out there.”
