Bob Votruba is on a mission. Mission-central is a light-blue school bus painted with positive and inspiring slogans and talks. His co-pilot, a Boston terrier named Bogart, travels with him as he brings his message to 100 college campuses a year. He figures the campus tour is going to take 10 years, so that’s a lot of college campuses, which suggests this is one important mission.
To find out what it is, one need only look at the side of his bus, where it says in big, green letters, “one million acts of kindness.”
Spreading that much kindness will require 50 acts of kindness every day for 55 years. “It’s a big, big number and totally obtainable, with kindness in the heart,” Votruba told the AARP Bulletin Today. Having gotten a late start, however, Votruba will need to pick up the pace. “I’ve got to do like 500 [acts] a day,” he said.
Votruba, 54, not only plans to tackle that challenge himself, but spend a decade trying to convince others to do so as well. He hands out stickers to the students he meets and holds forth on the virtues of his plan all over the Web, on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and his One Million Acts of Kindness Web site.
Votruba’s focus on human decency was sparked by the Sept. 11 tragedy, after which he designed a sticker and a Web site to display the message “Sow Only Seeds of Love.” That effort blossomed into the larger kindness crusade after two people he knew committed suicide and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting left him mourning again.
“I would like to see another Mother Teresa in the world because of this,” Votruba told AARP. “I want thousands of Mother Teresas. The world needs people to go out and care for one another.”
Photos courtesy of Bob Votruba