Whether they're called "goodlums" or the "kindness crew", the renowned quartet of do-gooders from Victoria, B.C. are hoping to inspire others with their book, Cool to be Kind: Random Acts and How to Commit Them.

Friends Val Litwin, Erik Hanson, Chris Bratseth and Brad Stokes took to the road in a 30-foot motorhome in August 2002 to spread their goodwill across Canada staging "kindness protests," in which they did helpful deeds for complete strangers.

"It all started off as a group of friends. We love to inspire and entertain people and we developed a basement web television show which focused specificaly on doing that," Bratseth told Canada AM.

"One of the things that we did was random acts of kindness. We would grab our digital camera and go in the community and help people."

Their spontaneous, kind offerings began in response to the tragedy of September 11 and the death of Stokes' mother, who died from ovarian cancer around the same time.

The group's brash approach has received reactions ranging from complete skepticism to sheer excitement.

"Some people say, 'I've been waiting for this' and other people are like, 'you're trying to hustle me'," Litwin said.

The "Kindness Crew" travelled to 18 cities in 109 days, during which they repaired roofs, took elderly people shopping, served food in soup kitchens, slept on the street with the homeless and offered cookies, massages and hugs to random passersby.

"The beautiful thing is every time you do a random act of kindness, it makes you feel great and increases your belief that the world is a wonderful place," Hansen said.

The following is an excerpt from Cool to be Kind: Random Acts and How to Commit Them:

Preface - Chris

At noon the nurses called us to her room. Devon, Brad's sister, was already inside stroking her mother's forehead. Brad moved to the other side of the bed and held Judy's weak hand. Her breathing was shallow, a rattling in the back of her throat. Her skin was pale and her body emaciated. Death was moments away. Her breath slowed, then stopped. Silence inhabited the sterile room.

We looked at each other uncertainly ― we'd never done this before. Brad groaned in pain and collapsed by Judy's side. We faced the reality of the situation: how were her children going to cope? Brad and Devon had no family — no father, no grandparents ― we were their family. Silently, I promised Judy that her life would move me to make a difference. Throughout our years in university together, Judy was a mother figure to all of us, her affection and advice knew no bounds. I wanted to return her kindness to the world, to give back rather than give up. Judy embodied kindness. She was love while she lived, and was returned to love in death. Her spirit would live on in every act of love and kindness we committed.

Introduction - Chris

Erik, Brad and I grew up together playing high school rugby in Powell River, a small coastal mill town, five hours north of Vancouver. We attended university together in Victoria and for four years we held tight to our friendship through rugby scrums, late-night road trips, and many, many term papers. Like most starving students, we worked late nights at restaurants looking for a free meal and money for the month's rent. That's where I met Val. Although our academic backgrounds differed (Val was an English Literature major and I was in geography), we discovered a mutual interest in pursuing careers in media. We were both committed to the idea of using television to change lives. With Erik we began to define this vision and, after taking care of his ailing mother for two years, Brad was also ready to join the team.

At the time, "reality television" was just beginning to grow in popularity, but after witnessing the distorted reality presented in these series, we were even more inspired to develop a show that discouraged conflict ("if it bleeds it leads") and was grounded in social change. We believed we could create television that inspired and informed while entertaining; television that focused on solutions rather than problems; television that empowered people by giving them tools to change their lives.

Together, we strived to develop a "reality" show based on a group of real friends rather than one contrived for the purpose of building drama and conflict. We wanted to create an opportunity for audiences to witness real people who wanted to make a difference in the world and were doing it in fresh, entertaining ways. With a hand-held camera we began to shoot an Internet Web show with the express purpose of helping others to "seize the day." It featured four segments, the first, "Urban Active Extreme," offered urban adventures to parking police, stockbrokers, and anyone willing to be kidnapped from work to play tennis or head into the heart of the city for skateboarding lessons. All participants embraced our guerilla filmmaking and people marvelled at the release of breaking away from the norm!

In the segment "Top 100 Experiences," we helped people realize one thing they dreamed of doing in the course of their lifetimes. Cameras rolling, we interviewed a taxi driver who always wanted to eat peanuts at a Yankees game, a child who wanted to ride an elephant bareback, and a university student who wanted to travel to Everest's base camp. With our $500 camera and 50¢ budget we couldn't help too many financially, but we were hopeful that our own dream of having a television show would be fulfilled and perhaps then we could make a few of theirs come true. Our Web site was soon inundated with requests from dreamers who shared their stories with other like-minded Internet adventurers from around the world. During the segment "Random Travels," we dug into our shallow pockets and with $500 traveled on the cheap to Mexico to prove that adventure could be completely spontaneous and low-cost. With the cheapest flight coming in just over $400, we would each have less that $100 to survive the week. While travelling in Mexico we experienced the kindness of strangers as locals sheltered us from torrential downpours under their tin roofs, or helped us navigate the jig-sawed streets.

On one of last days in Mexico, after a knee-buckling ride up the pacific coast to the small village of Yelapa, Erik, in his broken Portu-Spanish (he had a 30 per cent working knowledge of Portuguese from his time spent in Brazil and 5 per cent Spanish), tried connecting with the locals under the sun-shaded roofs of a café. When he saw bricks being tossed from the hull of a wooden fishing boat sitting in a foot of water Erik volunteered us for a couple of hours of back-breaking labour. The locals were building a school and needed help stacking them into piles on the beach. Erik's misadventures almost always involved something physically extreme and often painful. Erik stood on the gunnels of the boat and hurled bricks while Val added each brick to a growing block. We bellowed rugby songs that announced we were the Kindness Crew. The locals couldn't help but laugh at the "gringos" who would rather sling bricks than Coronas and they cheered us as the last brick was added. There was little conversation between the fifteen villagers gathered and ourselves, but there was a strong sense of connection and comfort that came from knowing we had given without the expectation of anything in return. Through this simple act of kindness we were able to transcend the cultural and language barrier ― kindness was a universal language. This experience helped shape the final segment of our web show, "Random Acts of Kindness."

We helped wherever help was needed. We cleaned homes, washed dishes, gave yoga lessons on the lawn, and started a free taxi service. Performing random acts of kindness proved to be the most entertaining for all of us ― and reactions were always extreme: from elation to frustration, bafflement (your gifts are free?) to suspicion (there must be a catch to this!). The footage was candid and often hilarious. We coined the phrase "Extreme Kindness" to convey to our audience that kindness can be a daring adventure. In order to hook the next generation of do-gooders, we needed to put a radical spin on something that was too often deemed mundane. For us, kindness was just the opposite ― it was outrageous, spontaneous, and unpredictable!

*

On September 11th, 2001 after a summer of filming, Erik got a call from his roommate's father, a retired history professor. "Turn on the television, World War III has started! I'm not joking!" he said to Erik, his voice trembling. We sat, stunned, in front of the television all day, watching in horror as the terrorist attacks unfolded. Like so many others across the continent, we felt helpless. Would people continue to embrace the kindness of strangers in the aftermath of September 11th?

The next day, the four us sat on Brad's deck, reflecting on the paper's shocking headlines: "All Flights Worldwide Grounded." "The Pentagon In Flames." "World Trade Center Collapses." The world appeared ready to split at the seams. Having watched the attacks from our living rooms as they happened thousands of miles away, we wondered how anything we did in Victoria could make a difference in New York. Suddenly it occurred to us that perhaps the only thing powerful enough to combat the massive wave of fear and violence sweeping the globe was an equally positive wave of love and kindness.

It was simple really: if we could change the life of just one person and that person in turn changed the life of another we could start a chain reaction. We would help people to "think globally and act locally," inspiring them to commit small acts of kindness and reminding them of the power they still had to make change in their communities and the world. We had found our mission: to connect the world through kindness!

Erik was ready to go the next day, but Brad (grabbing him by the wrists) explained the need for proper planning before we headed out the door. If we wanted to connect the world through kindness we would need a strategy. Would we fly to every state, province, and territory in North America and spend twenty-four hours performing random acts of kindness? That would help to restore the public's faith in flying, but realizing that that was a logistical and financial nightmare, a three-month driving tour across the continent was the next best thing.

After scouring the Internet for help, we received a reply from a woman named Karen working in a public relations firm in New Jersey saying, "I just love what you boys are doing! How can I help?" She was an expert in "splash media" stories, that is, turning a story into an overnight sensation, a front-page phenomenon. Our story fit perfectly ― four college kids who would do anything to help.

Karen got our story featured on American newswire: "Canadian College Boys Kill Americans With Kindness." The story hit a nerve–Canadian kids who care more for compassion than binge drinking and parties? A story about kindness?

As the story blasted from radios everywhere we received a flurry of requests for interviews, including a call from The Tonight Show saying they'd love to have us on the next time we were south of the border. From Tennessee to Texas we hit the airwaves, hoping to inspire Americans and build momentum for a tour. For the next three months, the story continued to circle, each week climbing higher on the news ladder until it finally jumped back across the border into Canada. Arthur Black of CBC's Basic Black decided to do a story on four young men from Victoria planning a trip across America to perform random acts of kindness. The story gained ground in Canada as news reporters, intrigued by the stereotype-bashing story of college kids on a road trip visiting senior citizen homes and giving out flowers, gave it full coverage.

In between interviews we worked restaurant jobs to make rent and finance the tour. We also combed the corporate community in our hometown and beyond, looking for socially responsible businesses that saw value in raising awareness and supporting our mission. The logistics of the tour meant many phone calls and emails to organize acts of kindness in combination with non-profit organizations that needed our help. In every major centre we organized a Kindness Marathon during which, from dawn to dusk, we hit the streets to perform as many acts of kindness as possible. If a roof needed fixing we'd help. If a teacher wanted us to speak at her school, we would be there. If a house needed cleaning, we would scrub it from top to bottom. The tour featured kindness 24/7.

The summer approached, six-months past our proposed starting date of January 1st, 2002. Unfortunately we hadn't raised enough money to venture across the whole continent; given our limited funds we would have to cut the United States from the tour. We felt deflated by our inability to get the project off the ground, but though we were down we were not out.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, we continued Random Kindness Thursdays, testing the marathon concept on our local citizens. In a converted 1960s ambulance, known as the Kindness Cruiser, we staked out storefronts preying on pedestrians in the hope of making their day with offers of: a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade; babysitting services; a crew to scrub pots and pans; free parking (plugging the meters until the coffers dried up); manning the desk while secretaries absconded from work to enjoy a free fruit salad.

Then, suddenly, it all started to fall into place. In the course of a conversation one night after hours of planning and wondering when the waiting game would end, we decided to commit 100 per cent to leaving at the end of August ― no holds barred. Even if we had to hitchhike 7000 kilometres, we were going! We were motivated by a sense of urgency: we had spent too much time planning and saving ― it was now or never!

Mid-summer, a pivotal piece of the puzzle materialized. A woman in Ottawa happened to turn on the television to watch a rerun of Vicki Gabereau featuring the Extreme Kindness Crew. She thought our proposed tour was a perfect fit for the company she worked for, CHIP Hospitality (Canadian Hotel Income Properties), a company that held real estate across the country. The hotel management firm was guided by strong values and a commitment to community; it was known as the "Hotel with Heart." Their public relations team at head office in Vancouver contacted us to see if we would be interested in their sponsorship. It was a perfect fit. These hotels became Kindness Headquarters across the country, their employees would join in our Kindness Marathons, and both the community and the company would benefit.

To help us with this grand undertaking we assembled a team. David Crow, a friend and fellow master's student at the University of Victoria, was coaxed into documenting the tour in writing, leaving behind a near-finished degree, a girlfriend, and a planned tripped with his mother to England. Kelly Seaman, a mutual friend, left his newly-formed production company with the hope of capturing every kind moment for a documentary film. Jonathon, my brother, abandoned his last year of university to help manage and organize the logistics of the tour. Lorraine Wilson, a publicist from James Hoggan and Associates, one of the premier public relations firms in Vancouver, offered free counsel and served as public relations coordinator from the west coast home base. She would take over for Karen. During the three-month tour, she would spend hours managing requests from the media and served as surrogate mother for the seven of us on tour. Her selfless dedication to the project proved pivotal in helping to assure that our message reached the masses.

With only two weeks to go, the Canadian Extreme Kindness tour was still seriously crippled ―we had no wheels! How would 7 crew members, 2 cameras, 3 laptops and 90 kilos of gear make it across the country? Dreading another year of inaction we surveyed our options: Greyhound bus, hitchhiking, bicycle. With only two days to go, Vancouver entrepreneur, Mike Baker, C.E.O. of Sole Custom Footbeds, offered us a motorhome, shrink-wrapped with enough Extreme Kindness decals to leave nothing to chance. The night before the Extreme Kindness Tour kicked off, Mike rolled into the driveway. Jaws dropped. Thirty-two feet of luxury liner awaited. We piled in relieved to know that, regardless of our financial constraints, we were going to be able to cross the country ―even if we had to coast home!

The final piece to fall into place was our Web site, essential for spreading the word, but in the days leading up to the tour our host company went bankrupt causing our site to crash. We worried that Canada would not be able to keep tabs on a tour touted as an interactive Web show. Val and I had one chance to convince two corporations of the value of our tour, and then that the work could be completed in the next 24 hours. We were elated when both Radiant Communications, a Web site host, and Net Genetix, a Web site development firm, came on board, saving us from certain disaster.

On August 26th, 2002 the Extreme Kindness Tour kicked off and we embarked on a journey that would take us through every extreme of culture, landscape, weather, emotion, and friendship. For most of us, the tour meant an end to the mundane chores associated with working for minimum wage and the beginning of a journey that would be the opposite of mundane. We were about to radically alter our understanding of Canada, kindness, and friendship. From Victoria, British Columbia, to St. John's, Newfoundland we would spend three months in close quarters, returning just in time for Christmas.

We hope that our Extreme Kindness Tour inspires and challenges you to be the change you wish to see in the world. If you want a better world, start right now! Don't waste a second. Walk into the next room and compliment someone, tell your family that you love them, buy a flower for a co-worker, volunteer in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, or visit someone in hospice. Be kind to yourself, too, and have fun! We hope that you will find, as we did, that only in giving do we truly receive.

Reprinted with the permission of ECW Press.