Kindness happens on Bribie

By Alistair Gray 

Emily Lovell and Ellie Wust, in front of the Pay it Forward board at the IKIGAI Café. 

Have you ever wondered how to pay it forward but have never known how? Emily Lovell and Ellie Wust have set up a Kindness Movement, I AM KIND.MVMNT and recently set up a Pay It Forward board at the IKIGAI Café and Workshop in Toorbul Street, Bongaree.  

You can take an item paid for by someone else or contribute to the board by paying it forward. It may be a coffee, a cake or whatever. In other words, your act of kindness may help someone else who may be struggling. When I called the café to meet Emily, I found the board overflowing with dockets, showing that kindness was alive and well on Bribie.  

Emily, who grew up on Bribie and her kindness partner, Ellie are both teachers at St Columban’s College Caboolture. 

“What we are trying to do is get people to recognise that small acts of kindness can go a big way,” Emily said.   

They started with a small group of girls at the school and started doing gratitude and random acts of kindness. They quickly realised they lacked self-esteem and developed a journal to guide young people on their kindness journey. The journal includes activities and reflections to make them feel good about themselves, starting with self-love, gratitude, random acts of kindness and doing stuff in the community, with money earned from the sale of the journals given back to the community.  

What Emily and Ellie are doing aligns with Keahni and Oscar, the owners of the IKIGAI Café, the value of bringing the community together and giving back. They suggested setting up the Pay It Forward board in their café. The IKIGAI Café is more than a café selling superb coffee and food; it is where ‘inspiration meets expression’ and creativity meets with its guided workshops, pottery sessions and art classes—a great place to relax.