National Make a Difference Day

To continue your edification on random specific and special holidays (or days of recognition), we are going to take a dive into something I think the world could really use right about now. The fourth Saturday of October is National Make a Difference Day. No, I am not making this up, why do you ask?

October 23, 2021

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Personally, I have a fondness for holidays that fall on the Xth day of whatever month. Remember, Grandparents Day is the first Sunday after Labor Day? (And you thought you weren’t learning anything here.) Anyway, I love the set “day” versus set “date” because they tend to be more convenient. Take Halloween for example. It’s on October 31^st. Same as it is every other year. However, this year October 31^st is on a Sunday. The pain involved in rousing Sunday night trick or treaters bright and early on a school day is real. I would LOVE it if Halloween were always the 4^th Saturday of October.

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But I digress. Again. National Make a Difference Day will fall on October 23^rd this year.

What can I do?

Make a Difference Day is dedicated to committing your time and talents to your community. It originated in 1992 as the largest national day of community service. And while the organizations that coordinated that first Make a Difference Day are no long coordinating activities, the idea of Make a Difference Day lives on. It can be absolutely anything that you want to offer to your community – donate your skills to Habit for Humanity, sign up to be a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sister, donate some money to a charity of your choice, smile and say something to a person who looks like they are having a bad day, petition Congress to make Halloween the 4th Saturday in October. The point is, make it about someone else. Ok, the last one might be a little bit about me, so that’s a bad example, but the others are worth considering.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?

– Martin Luther King, Jr

You can do this.

We are all so busy with our lives that sometimes its hard to just stop and think of other people. And not in a “fine, what do you want?” kind of way. A genuine, heartfelt effort to make someone else’s day just a little bit better. You can help kids, the elderly, cats and dogs, the environment, your co-worker, your neighbor. And there are a wide variety of comfort levels with how you can get involved – I tend to prefer being a behind the scenes workhorse. Other people like the challenge of coordinating a group effort. Providing one on one help to a specific person can bring an amazing sense of community involvement. There is no wrong way to help. Ok, there are some wrong ways, but there are way more right ways. Find a right way and get started.

If you’re looking for ideas, Colleen and I were recently introduced to platelet donation. Atlanta Blood Bank is a wonderful organization and desperately in need of donors. You could literally give of yourself, and what could make more of a difference than that?

Atlanta Blood Services

Stay tuned for next month, when we discuss National Bring Me a Bottle of Wine day!