- Good Things Guy and The Helpers have launched the 1 Million Good Things Before Christmas campaign to inspire one million acts of kindness across South Africa.
- The campaign builds towards World Kindness Day on 13 November 2026 and continues through the festive season.
- Acts of kindness include volunteering, supporting charities, helping neighbours, donating to causes and assisting strangers.
- The Helpers platform connects South Africans with charities and community organisations and will feature a live counter tracking progress towards the target.
- Good Things Guy founder Brent Lindeque and editor Tyler Vivier are encouraging individuals, schools, workplaces and businesses to turn small acts of kindness into a collective movement. *
Good Things Guy and The Helpers have launched a national campaign challenging South Africans to complete one million acts of kindness before Christmas, building towards World Kindness Day on 13 November.
The 1 Million Good Things Before Christmas campaign aims to encourage individuals, families, schools, workplaces and businesses to make a positive difference in their communities through everyday acts of kindness and helping.
The initiative seeks to make giving back accessible to everyone, emphasising that meaningful contributions do not necessarily require money, influence or significant resources.
Brent Lindeque, founder of Good Things Guy, said the campaign aims to turn the willingness to help into collective action.
“Every single day, there are South Africans doing extraordinary things for complete strangers, and I believe there are millions more who want to help but don’t know where to start. That’s why we’re launching 1 Million Good Things Before Christmas. You don’t need money or a massive platform. You just need to care enough to take that first step,” he said.
“Imagine if millions of South Africans chose kindness? We might not be able to change everything overnight, but we can change something for someone. And if we do that together, imagine what we could achieve? That’s the South Africa I believe in, and the South Africa I want us to build, together.”
The campaign encourages participants to undertake acts ranging from helping a stranger and supporting a local charity to checking in on a neighbour, volunteering time, buying someone a coffee, supporting a local business or picking up litter.
The principle is that any action that helps another person or makes a positive difference counts towards the national target.
Connecting people with opportunities to help
The Helpers platform is central to the initiative, providing a way for people to discover charities, organisations and causes where they can contribute their time, skills or resources.
The platform aims to address a common barrier to volunteering and community involvement: knowing where to start. It will also feature a live counter tracking participation and showing how individual contributions add up towards the million-act target.
The campaign will build towards World Kindness Day on 13 November and continue through November and into the festive season. Participants are encouraged to share their good deeds and invite others to join, with the emphasis on collective participation rather than competition.
Tyler Vivier, editor of Good Things Guy, said the impact of the initiative would come from the accumulation of small, everyday actions.
“One million acts of kindness may sound like an impossible number, until you realise that every smile, every shared meal and every bottle of cold water offered to a stranger on a hot day counts. Kindness doesn’t have to be grand to be meaningful. It simply has to begin.
“And when enough of us choose to do one small thing for someone else, those little acts become a movement capable of changing the world.”
South Africans can find opportunities to help and follow the campaign’s progress at The Helpers.
* Summary created by AI
