Taking a Kindness Selfie at Seaside Library!

This past November and December, Queens Public Library celebrated our second annual It’s Time for Kind campaign, with special programs, events, and activities at every QPL location.

Thanks to your generosity, our system-wide food drive in partnership with Food Bank For New York City collected 8,400 pounds of canned goods to help feed our neighbors during the holiday season. That's 4.2 tons of kindness, and almost double the amount we collected last year!

Our unique events included an evening of conversation and healing with Korey Wise of the exonerated Central Park Five; film screenings and talks connected to our Jewish Refugees in Shanghai exhibit, which told the story of the Chinese communities that offered sanctuary to Jewish refugees during World War II; and storytimes for children across the borough featuring books about kindness.

Library customers of all ages produced kindness chains and other crafts that we displayed in our branches. Our English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students made holiday cards to send to our homebound Mail-a-Book customers. We held letter-writing campaigns for troops overseas and veterans here at home. Children and adults took home bookmarks encouraging acts of kindness, and they created books to express their gratitude for people in their lives. Visitors to our branches left stories of kindness on our Kindness Walls and posted online to our Digital Kindness Wall too!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for It’s Time for Kind and helped us show that kindness is a language that we all can speak, both during the holidays and every single day.