From left, Okemos residents Liz and Emily Morgan, 17, along with Haslett resident Becky Roth, shop for flowers Saturday morning to take to residents of senior living home The Marquette as part of the ePIFanyNOW program Pass It Forward.
When Bob Hoffman, the public relations manager for Wharton Center, was cut off by a woman driving in front of him, he had no idea it would lead to the grassroots nonprofit movement ePIFanyNow.org.
“I was on my way home from work one day, and the woman didn’t even see me or pay attention to me and she just cut me off,” Hoffman said. “Of course, I (screamed). I started thinking, ‘You know what, I’m going to give her $50 because she didn’t even see me and break her ball of stress.”
Hoffman invited friends to do the same, resulting in 250 people at Dublin Square Irish Pub, 327 Abbot Road, for the inaugural Pass It Forward party in February 2009, which was hosted by the website.
ePIFanyNow.org is a website dedicated to making the world better through simple acts of kindness, said Hoffman, who founded the site.
Volunteers such as Lynda White, an account executive at BCP-Blohm Creative Partners, came back to participate in the second Pass It Forward event Saturday after volunteering with her family last year.
“I took my family, and we went out into the community and got $10 Meijer gift cards,” White said. “We tried to go to places where people were maybe living a little closer to the edge. One woman hugged my son and said, ‘You have no idea how much you just helped me.’ And it wasn’t just the $10, because the $10 wasn’t going to turn around anybody’s world, but it was that someone cares about her.”
Pass It Forward volunteers bought groceries, passed out fruit and sang to the elderly and others.
Others, such as psychology senior Austin Johnston, bought six flower bouquets and passed them out at Bickford Assisted Living & Memory Care, 3830 Okemos Road, in Okemos, and passed out pizzas to the Sparrow Hospital Emergency Services staff.
“I had a blast,” Johnston said. “The meaning of (Pass it Forward), how one nice deed kind of multiplies and (makes) someone smile.”
Bickford Assisted Living & Memory Care resident Rosemary Hathaway said she was happy to be visited and she appreciated the flowers.
“You don’t know how much good you’re doing,” Hathaway said. “You couldn’t do anything better.”
Volunteers spent two hours doing good deeds for strangers and received varying responses from participants, Hoffman said.
“When you go out there, you’re going to see people that say, ‘I don’t need any help,’” he said. “You can say, ‘Great, you’re in a position to help someone else, so here is a card — pass it on.’”
ePIFanyNow.org pushes everyone to help out, rich or poor, Hoffman said.
“There is a misconception that only the poor people need help,” he said. “It’s not the poor people that need to be touched, it’s everyone. The richest person in the world has stress.”
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