Operation Kindness Worldwide.

Sounds a bit wacky, doesn't it. A bit hippy-dippy, 1960s, make love not war, all that stuff.

But hang on a minute.

Last week I pointed out that the government in the UK is fostering a climate of fear. (The link is here, if you missed it.) They would like us to creep into corners while they drop bombs on the 'bad guys'. While I suggested that there are millions of kind, wonderful, fascinating people in the world and we will only make progress if we get out there, understand and celebrate our differences.

There is, I think, a parallel in this Kindness Initiative. We can either pull up our metaphorical drawbridges, look after ourselves and those closest to us, let the rest of the world sink or swim. Or we can open our doors and our thinking and do our bit - however small - to oil the global wheels. (I know, too many metaphors.)

So the Mandala Trust (I'll come back to them in a minute) have defined November 13th as World Kindness Day. Just one day to make a point of thinking of someone else - from the half-forgotten man down the road with just his dog for company to the women walking miles in crippling heat to collect water - and doing something small. Take the old man to the library. Buy your neighbour a cake. Help the mother in the supermarket with two small children and a week's worth of shopping to pack.

Kindness can be infectious. I help the woman up the road. She offers her neighbour a lift to the station. The neighbour gives up his seat on the train for the woman with more shopping bags than hands ... and so it goes on. There's no reason for the wave to end. And if it should peter out because someone is having a bad day, then start another.

Does that seem so wacky now? So hippy-dippy? So 1960s? So here's the link for Operation Kindness Worldwide. Drop by and like them. And spend a minute or two thinking - what can you do on the 13th?

(And the Mandala Trust? The man behind it happened to be there when I was taken, suddenly and dramatically, ill on a beach in Cambodia. He held my world together when I was unable to do it for myself. He is a good, decent, honest man. And he runs the Mandala Trust - a small organisation that helps fund projects across the world that are set up and run by local people. For instance, I met a man in Cambodia who has a project to enable the children of parents who work on the dumpsite go to school - he has set it up himself, in response to a local need. All the Mandala Trust does is help pay rent, wages for a cook etc, just to keep the show in the road. They don't wade in with Western ideas about right and wrong, but prop up tiny projects run by local people that might collapse without them. So if all you can manage on the 13th is to put your hand in your pocket for a penny or two, here is their website: The Mandala Trust.)