Photo credit: volp91w / Foter.com / CC BY-ND

#bdaygenerosity is one of my favorite hashtags to use on my twitter account. I love seeing the ways in which people use birthdays to do nice things for others.

I’ve written about passing on birthday kindness before, of course. I love non-profits that work to give children birthday parties. I’ve written before about Birthday Blessings and others, but here’s a story about another one in Texas — The Birthday Party Project — and its efforts also in Minneapolis.

Here are some other great examples:

• A nine-year-old girl hosting a food drive for her birthday told an Orlando TV station, “I like helping people more than I like getting stuff…I like making people happy.”
• Siblings in New York invited 100 folks to their birthday, asking them to bring bread and deli meat instead of gifts, and together the party made more than 900 sandwiches to take to an Albany homeless shelter.
• A woman who hosts CPR training parties for her birthday after her life was saved by an MLB umpire at an Arizona Diamondbacks game.

The Global Poverty Project contrasted the extravagance of Kylie Jenner’s 2015 birthday celebrations with the selflessness of Nobel Peace Prize-winning education activist Malala Yousafzai who marked her 18^th birthday by opening a school for Syrian refugees.

Instead of having a lavish party, she spent the day in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley at a school intended to help 200 girls gain baccalaureate and vocational degrees.

“I am honored to mark my 18th birthday with the brave and inspiring girls of Syria.” Malala said in a statement. “On this day, I have a message for the leaders of this country, this region and the world – you are failing the Syrian people, especially Syria’s children. This is a heartbreaking tragedy – the world’s worst refugee crisis in decades.”

Using a birthday to fight heartbreak? That’s truly something to celebrate.

Author: United Nations Photo / photo on flickr