How Doing Good Deeds Year-Round Can Begin with Good Deeds Day

The mission of Good Deeds Day transcends the day itself. Dedicating time to volunteerism and helping others can be year-round, even for the Good Deeds Day team, who’ve seen its mission become a ripple effect of good for thousands of volunteers.    

Good Deeds Day is an organization and annual event where volunteers from around the world dedicate a day to volunteering and helping others and is built upon the idea that every individual can do something to improve the lives of others. Essentially, it’s a global movement of doing good that helps its partners — companies and nonprofit organizations — create positive change. Plus, the organization helps connect volunteers to the causes they care about any day of the year. 

This year’s Good Deeds Day will take place on April 11, 2021. In order to make the day accessible to anyone around the world, it’s hybrid approach is designed to allow anyone to participate in events either in person or virtually. Participants can easily send an Ecard to an individual, organization or cause they care about if they are unable to volunteer outside. 

Traditionally, thousands of people go out and volunteer and partner with hands-on community initiatives on Good Deeds Day, which features a diverse range of projects, entertainment and food vendors for participants. 

The 2020 Good Deeds day undertook a major shift because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its events were held virtually. The focus became doing good from home. Yet, the organization didn’t view the pandemic as a roadblock. It began to shift its messaging to encourage partners to continue their important work to creatively address the issues communities were facing around the world — like food shortages, medical supply scarcity and hardships caused by job loss. 

Originally based in Israel in 2011, Good Deeds Day spread by word of mouth to other countries after a few years of operation and became global in 2011. 

“I think maybe part of its growth was through Jewish communities, because in Judaism, we have a concept of Tikkun Olam, which means to repair the world. It’s about being a positive change, and we should work on making the world a better place,” said Hannah Wojno, the director of International Good Deeds Day

Wojno moved to Israel nine years ago when the organization and movement was on the brink of becoming global and has always been involved in community initiatives from a young age.  

“Good Deeds Day strives to create a positive, sustainable long term impact in the world,” she added. “It helps individuals around the world see themselves as positive change makers who treat people with kindness.”  

Good Deeds Day is the pinnacle of doing good year round, but it was also a result of a relentless effort to understand how to maximize the volunteer skills of its global community. 

In order to understand the communities that it works in, the organization’s team conducted two surveys on volunteering. They found that people just don’t know how to do good and what organizations would accept them as volunteers. Additionally, people felt that they didn’t have the time to commit to the causes they cared about. As a result, Good Deeds Day is designed to remove the barriers to volunteering and gives people a taste of what it feels like to be a part of something bigger than themselves. 

The Good Deeds Day movement can teach anyone that every individual has the power to make a difference and one cause can light a volunteerism spark in someone to do the same for their fellow neighbor. It’s a good teaser and taste of what they can do year round, according to Wojno, and it exploded around the world. 

One of Good Deed Days recent accomplishments was Good Stock, the largest global conference of doing good. The virtual conference featured keynote speakers of educators, nonprofit professionals, volunteers, government officials and other leaders from around the world who dove into key topics like leading change through volunteering, being good in business and the sustainable development goals. 

Good Deeds Day was able to bring more than 2500 participants together from over 93 countries around the world for Good Stock. 

“The most rewarding part of the work is seeing our partners — which are small organizations around the world that don’t have a lot of resources make a significant positive difference in their communities,” Wojno said.

“I believe this is how we create a better world through regular people doing just normal positive things and treating each other really well,” she added.