The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
Holy Mischief: Creating a Kindness Movement
What happens when a computer programmer receives a divine calling to ministry? For Reverend Dr. Shannon Karafanda, it launched a transformative journey culminating in a global kindness movement that's changing lives one small act at a time.
Shannon's path took an unexpected turn when she joined forces with her friend Alan Todd to plant a church centered on what they called "A-OK Projects"—Acts of Kindness performed with no strings attached. Whether handing out water on scorching days, planting flowers for neighbors, or surprising strangers with free gas, these gestures weren't about growing church membership but simply spreading love. Most fascinating were the reactions—many people actually refused kindness out of suspicion, revealing how starved our world has become for genuine goodness.
When tragedy struck and Alan suddenly passed away, Shannon carried their vision forward, eventually transforming it into the "Holy Mischief" movement. The name perfectly captures what these acts accomplish—creating positive disruptions in our negative status quo. What began as a small Lenten project among six churches in 2020 faced the immediate challenge of COVID-19. Yet rather than faltering, the movement flourished as people craved connection during isolation, growing from 150 members to thousands across multiple continents.
Shannon's insights on kindness as a "superpower" offer a revolutionary perspective. The power lies not in the act itself but in the connections created—benefiting not just giver and receiver but even those who witness or later hear about the kindness. In an era the Surgeon General has identified as suffering from an "epidemic of loneliness" more harmful than smoking, these simple acts create essential human bonds that ripple outward in unexpected ways.
Ready to cause some holy mischief in your community? Visit the Holy Mischief Facebook group or website for inspiration and join a growing movement proving that small acts of unexpected goodness can transform our world one smile, one connection, one moment at a time.
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Well, hello there and welcome. You are listening to the Kindness Matters podcast and I am your host, mike Rathbun. What is this podcast all about? It's about kindness. It's a pushback against everything negative that we see in the news and on social media today, and it's a way to highlight people, organizations that are simply striving to make their little corner of the world a little better place. If you want to join in on the conversation, feel free, Go ahead and follow us on all of your social media feeds. We're on Facebook, instagram, tiktok. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out and, in the meantime, so sit back, relax, enjoy and we'll get into the Kindness Matters podcast.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome to the show everybody. Thank you so much for making that conscious choice to spend 30 minutes here today with the kindness matters podcast and myself. Your your host, mike Rathbun. Um, we're so excited to have you here and we are so excited that you, that you chose to hang out with us for 30 minutes or so. Um, and you know what? If you hear something on this podcast that you absolutely adore, please, please, please, please, please. Tell a friend. Phone a friend. Tell a friend, tell a family member, just you know, tell them you found a podcast that kind of lifts you up and makes you feel good and kind of motivates you if that's what you're feeling. Kind of motivates you, if that's what you're feeling.
Speaker 1:I guess, given today's guest, I should say if the spirit moves you. Yeah, you guys. This is so cool. My guest today is so amazing. I'm going to see if I can get this right. The Reverend Dr Shannon Carafonda.
Speaker 2:You got it, all those vowels, you got it Way to go.
Speaker 1:Holy buckets, and I think I even enunciated Reverend Doctor. Welcome to the show, shannon.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy to come on and talk about things that are uplifting and joyful.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that's what we're all about here. We're, you know, we're that sanctuary away from your social media news feed and your news stations and all that other good stuff, all that downer stuff. So now you are the pastor at Trinity UMC Carterville.
Speaker 2:In Cartersville, Georgia, Georgia's museum city.
Speaker 1:I wish I'd mentioned that's no relation to Jimmy and Rosalyn.
Speaker 2:It is not related at all to Jimmy Carter. I believe the name is from a different Carter. There at one point was a Carter's. Well, there still is a Carter's Lake somewhere close by. I think that's the connection there, if I'm getting my history right. But yeah, it's an area that started to really grow because because of a project that was being done to build a lake and to build a dam and to harness electricity, because of the dam, and when all the workers came to make that project happen, a lot of them stayed, A rail came in, a whole lot of other things. And then at one point someone said you know what? We should start building some museums. And so we have actually five museums in the city of Cartersville and many of them are Smithsonian affiliated museums. It's a great city, really yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a Western art museum and it's the largest Western art museum in the country. Really very cool art that is there.
Speaker 2:We have an automobile museum that has rotating exhibits as well as a few permanent displays, and then there is a science museum that is quite large and we recently had a a meteor fall through the sky in the Atlanta area and fell in one particular spot in Georgia and apparently there are people that go out and to hunt meteorites when they fall and they found it and it's now in the museum and they're studying it and are finding all sorts of interesting things about it.
Speaker 1:That is so cool. And what's the population of?
Speaker 2:Cartersville. Well, during the day it's about 100,000, and at night it's about 25,000.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. So do all those people come to town to work in the museums.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a large power plant. They work in the museums, the school system, the hospital. Anheuser-busch has a plant here, a brewery here, and you know there's some carpet mills. There's a lot of industry that is here. It's really a booming area.
Speaker 1:So cool. Now, you weren't born and raised there, right?
Speaker 2:Not in Cartersville, no, I was born in Atlanta and have lived in various suburbs around Atlanta almost my entire life.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, as I mentioned, reverend Doctor, yes, that's quite the title.
Speaker 2:It is. I tend to like to collect titles and degrees, but it's been a wild ride. When I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to go to Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1:Ramblin'.
Speaker 2:Wreck Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech. I wasn't sure what I wanted to study. I quickly discovered it was not math or science. However, georgia Tech has a great business school, so I got a management degree with a focus on information systems. I did computer programming for quite a few years and then one day I was on a van with the people from my church who taught Sunday school and I was minding my own business, so halfway, listening to what the associate pastor who was driving the bus was talking about.
Speaker 2:And I had this incredible moment where God didn't speak to me audibly, but really didn't speak to me audibly, but really made it clear that I was being called into something and that something was ministry and that I needed to figure out what that looked like. And I did what any person would do. I did absolutely nothing with that for several months because I was scared. And finally, when it was time for me to accept that calling, I went to church and after worship was going to talk to the senior pastor. He was out. That same associate pastor who was driving the van that day was there and I said well, that's who I'm supposed to talk to. And she said we've been waiting for this and from then on it's been like a roller coaster ups and downs, turning upside down. Sometimes I'm queasy, sometimes it's full of adrenaline and it's been an amazing ride.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so cool. And now when one? So I would imagine that required a theology degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had to go back to school.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going for.
Speaker 2:The information systems degree did not cut it, although I have used a good bit of it, especially the management portion of it. But yeah, I had to go and get a master's of divinity degree. So I went to Candler School of Theology on the Emory University campus. It's a three-year program. I did that and then later on, like I said, I like to collect degrees I was like I kind of want one more. So I did a distance program with Boston University School of Theology. I would go up a couple of times a week, a couple of times a year and do an intensive with a cohort of people, and then the rest of it was online. I was Zooming before. Zooming was cool. And I did a doctorate in transformational leadership and the focus was on having a growth mindset in an organization, on having a growth mindset in an organization.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, wow. So was all of this leading you to a church, planting a church? Explain to me please. What does planting a church mean? I've heard the phrase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have established churches that have been here since before we were the United States and we have many, many in the United Methodist Church and our system is a connectional system. So we have a bishop who's over an area and says, hey, shannon, you need to go to that church, and that's typically the way things happen. But occasionally there will be someone, either a clergy person, who feels called to start a church in a new area, or missionally. We might look at an area and say there's not a United Methodist Church there, that's a growing area, and so someone will put a church in that area. And so planting a church means, if you think about it like a garden, you don't just grow a tomato, you've got to make sure the soil is ready.
Speaker 2:You need to make sure that you're doing all the things to cultivate a good area for something to be planted and grown. And so we talk about planting a church, because you don't just start a worship service. You've got to get a crew, a team of people together who want to do that. It takes a very specific mindset to do that, and then you need some resources and funding and all of that is a big part of it. So I had just gotten commissioned as a minister. So at that point I was just the Reverend, not the Reverend doctor, and a friend of mine was planting a church.
Speaker 2:And when I heard he was planting a church, God was like nudging me again you need to call him, you need to be his associate. Well, you don't plant a church with an associate Like there's usually not a need for that. Okay, but I called him and I said you need me to be your associate. And he's like okay, tell me more. And I said I don't know. I got this feeling that God was telling me to call you and we kind of just kind of ignored it for a couple of weeks. And then he called me back and he said you know, a really good employee will bring in a certain number of people and pay for themselves. So let's give it a go and see what happens.
Speaker 1:And we went from there. Wow, and now this was Alan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was my friend Alan Todd. He had come to the North Georgia area from Florida, had been working in youth ministry for quite some time. He was the youth minister at the churchudge from God that he was supposed to start, a church that was supported a good bit from that church that he was working in already, so several of the families that started with us came from that church.
Speaker 1:Got it, got it, got it. So you and Alan went about the process of starting a new church. I mean, I can't even imagine what all goes into that. Where do you find your parishioners? How do you get the money to build a church, because I'm assuming that that requires you to build a church.
Speaker 2:It does. Well, it does. Eventually Some will build a brick and mortar. At the beginning, when we were starting to meet, we met in people's homes and then we would gather on a regular basis to do acts of kindness, projects, which I'm going to talk about in just a second. But when we started doing worship services, we were renting space in a local high school, so we were in their auditorium and that's where we had our worship services school, so we were in their auditorium and that's where we had our worship services.
Speaker 2:The thing that really made me excited about working with Alan is that he said I want this to be about servant leadership and servant evangelism, I think, is the word that he used, and not in kind of the political sense that we hear about it today. This was really about I want to share God's love through kindness. And he said I want us, once a month, to go out in the community and to do things for other people with no expectation that they're coming to church, because that's not why we do it. It's not about getting, as we say, butts in the seat, it's about loving people. And I said that sounds great.
Speaker 2:And it's hard to train church people about that because, especially ones who are starting a church, because they're like, okay, so I'm going to do something nice and then tell them about the church, I said, no, you're going to just do something nice, period independence. If they ask you why you're doing this with someone else, that might lead to the church, but it may not, and that's okay. We are doing acts of kindness because God tells us to love other people, which I was like. That sounds so simple and easy. Why are we not doing more of this? And he called them acts of kindness or A-OK, projects, a-ok acts of kindness.
Speaker 2:A-OK projects, a-ok acts of kindness, because when you do an act of kindness.
Speaker 1:Everything is.
Speaker 2:A-OK, I love that, which was super cheesy, but that's why we loved Alan. And so, before we even had our first big worship service, we were doing those monthly. We would hand out cold water on a hot day, we would plant flowers in someone's yard if they wanted to, or we would just give them the flowers, or if they said no, thank you, we would just walk away. We did a gas buy down after one of the times when gas prices spiked up. We went to the one of the local gas stations and said, hey, we'd like to buy your first $20 worth of gas. We had people tell us no, which I think surprised a lot of people.
Speaker 2:It happens more than you think, yeah, A lot of people are very suspicious of kindness. What is it you want? What is it that you're doing? Why are you doing this? Are you a cult? What you know? What's going? On here and um, so we had to learn that. Our response to that is I understand. Thank you very much. Like. Like, it's okay, I get.
Speaker 1:I get that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah it was it was really really interesting. Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was really interesting. Yeah, it's like, you know, here's chocolate.
Speaker 1:no, like I just can't imagine that you will never hear me say no when there's chocolate same.
Speaker 2:Um, in fact, the only reason I say no is because I've already had too much and uh, I know it's bad for me to have too much like a little bit, a little bit healthy uh, especially there's no such thing as too much like a little bit healthy there really is no such thing as too much, shannon, I'm sorry, there's really not.
Speaker 2:I know, I know I'm just trying to talk myself out. So this is what we were doing as a group and I was working with Alan almost every day. I mean, if I wasn't in the office doing something and seeing him, we would text each other or I might, I'd be on the phone and we were just. And the early parts of planting a church are super exciting because there's all this wonder and curiosity that goes with it and it's super, super exciting. But unfortunately, uh, but unfortunately, the week before we were going to have our big worship service, where this is our launch service is what we called it Our big public worship service, where we're going to start the church. Right, this is like day one. A week before that happened, alan passed away. Suddenly, alan passed away. Suddenly. He was, you know, in this. He died. We're pretty sure it was a heart attack. It was very quick. There weren't really a lot of signs, or?
Speaker 2:anything that you know his family knew of, but he had come home from work. I remember the last time I saw him he had been painting a rental house Someone that he knew was moving out of his rental house and so he had gone and painted and he came in and he had on like these painting overalls with paint splattered all over and I was feeling down about something and he spoke words of encouragement and life into me and made me feel better. Then he went home and got changed and he cooked a meal for the family that was moving out and moving into their new house and they had packed the meal into the car it was him and his wife and his girls and he went to turn on the car but before he could engage into drive or anything, he just slumped over the wheel.
Speaker 1:Holy cow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shocking, but like so many little things in there, there were just these moments of hope in the middle of all of this that church did go on to launch. I preached that first service kind of got us going, got another pastor in there at one point. It did really well, Ended up merging at one point with another church. But I could not let the idea of acts of kindness go. I just thought there's something to AOK projects.
Speaker 2:that is the secret sauce of life. When you do kindness, it's a superpower. And it's not a superpower because you're doing something. It's a superpower because of the connection that happens between you and somebody else. They feel better, you feel better, your body's flooded with all these endorphins and it just you know you're checking a box. That just feels really, really good. But I have come to discover it's not just the two of you that feel better. People who witness an act of kindness feel better. And when we tell a story of an act of kindness, the people who are listening feel better.
Speaker 2:And to me, that is the secret sauce of life.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, oh, that is so cool. Going back for just one second, I can't imagine that first sermon after Alan passed that first sermon after Alan passed what you? Had to work up inside of yourself to get that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember what I leaned on was that God is making all things new, and there's two places in the Bible where that language is used. One is in the book of Revelation, where the mess is in front of us and God turns it into something beautiful and there's no more crying and no more mourning and no more weeping, and God is making all things new.
Speaker 2:And the other one is in one of Paul's letters and he talks about God is making all things new, and isn't that a great and wonderful thing? And so I leaned into that and that has become one of my favorite scriptures for that reason, because it reminds me there's always a mess, but there's always a way for it to be transformed, and that you know. I really believe that AOK Projects although I have changed that phrasing- I was just going to ask you about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, only a few people who were there at that early time knew that language around AOK projects, and so this and this was before social media, so there weren't hashtags there. You know, things weren't branded in the same way that they're branded now. But I was at another church at this point and another colleague in the North Georgia area, in the United Methodist Church, sends me an email and says I am trying to do a conference and I'd like for you to come speak. And I, to this day, swear that. He said in the email I am trying to get the holy mischief makers of the conference together to talk about mission work.
Speaker 2:He says I never said those words together, but that's what I remember and I thought holy mischief, I don't know what that is, but I want to do it. And I thought really, that's what acts of kindness are. It's a little bit of mischief because it disrupts somebody's day. It's not malicious in any way, but it's disruptive because there's so many things that we do on autopilot and now there's so much negativity that negativity has become the status quo. So holy mischief snaps you out of that status quo and makes you think there is some good in the world.
Speaker 2:There is something being made new today. So anytime I experienced or did an act of kindness project, I would at this point social media had started very briefly I would share that story with people either on social media or in person, and I would say that's just a little bit of holy mischief. A little bit of holy mischief and my name became associated with those words and the hashtag holy All right.
Speaker 2:Holy mischief, and it stayed like that for a while. It was just sort of this little thing and I thought we got to do something with this. More people need to know about this. But you know, I didn't really know what to do and I am meeting with my district superintendent, who's kind of my- boss, my superior for an annual review.
Speaker 2:And she said what's next for you? I said I don't really know, but I feel like holy mischief, it's probably got something to do with that. And she said, well, you can start a movement. And I went, no, no way, hard pass movements. Movements are for cults. And I went, no, not gonna do it.
Speaker 2:So I get home and I'm like the rest of everything went fine, like it was a great review, and I get home I'm kind of thinking about it and I was reading something and reading how, uh, jesus movement of Christianity started from Judaism and how the Wesleyan movement of United Methodism started out of the Church of England, and I went, oh, a movement? Oh, so if it's not focused on me because that's usually what cults are focused on is on a person then perhaps I could start a movement because it's not focusing on me or really any of the people in the movement, the movements focusing on those who need kindness in the world. And I'm like, well, I don't. I mean there's if there is a book on how to start a movement. I haven't found it, or haven't found one that I would really trust necessarily.
Speaker 1:There's no movements for dummies.
Speaker 2:There's no movements. For that I did look, I really have. I've done my best, um, and I thought, okay, I don't know how to go about this. I said let me just start small. Let me start with um 40, with 40 days of holy mischief. The time between Ash Wednesday and Easter is known as Lent. It's the 40 days that lead up to Easter, not including the Sundays, and I'll put together 40 different things that you can do, one for each day. I'll pick some scripture that goes with it, so it can be a devotional guide too. And let's get a few more churches involved. It's not just the church that I'm at right now, let's see if there's a few. So I asked a few. I think I had about six who were like yep, we're in. So I sent them a box not only with the little devotional guides but like. So one of the things during the 40 days was everyone deserves gold stars. Give someone some gold stars.
Speaker 2:So I had gold stars in the box and I had t-shirts in the box and I had some had bubbles and noisemakers and just whimsical fun things, and the box said holy mischief on it. I shipped those off to the churches and things were going great. People were excited about this Lenten series and how to make this work. Well, that was in 2020. And Lent 2020, you know, march 13th happened like right in the middle of Lent, and I thought, well, there goes the movement. You know, this is really focusing on being safe and COVID and whatever this means for us. That's more important. Right now. I don't know what's going to happen to the movement. This is really focusing on being safe and COVID and whatever this means for us. That's more important. Right now, I don't know what's going to happen to the movement.
Speaker 2:One of the things I did during that time, right before COVID hit, I said all of these churches need to be connected somehow. I'm going to start a Facebook group for these people who are in these churches so they can encourage each other like, hey, today's the day that you're supposed to, you know, go tell your neighbor how much they mean to you or whatever, and encourage one another and tell each other how it went and you know, sometimes people were like today was really hard, I didn't realize how hard it would be. Or today was so much fun, I didn't realize how much joy. So it was good, it was great.
Speaker 2:Surprisingly, though, once COVID hit, most of the things that you could do could have been done at a distance, because several of them were anonymous and the ones that weren't like hugging people, you could change to hugging those in your family or pivot that somehow to writing a note to your family, sure. So what I found was because you could do those things in a safe distance, people craved them and they were looking for opportunities for connection, and social media was one of the places where they were able to find some connection. Even though it wasn't the deep connections that we know of face-to-face, it still was a type of connection.
Speaker 2:So these churches started inviting their friends and I went from like 150 people in the group to several hundred people in the group and then, over like the next year or two, we've got like 2000 people in this group, some people are across the world, in Australia and the UK and in Africa, and it's been a joy to see what they will share when they're looking at you know, hey, I experienced this, this little act of holy mischief, and they'll share to the group and it's been great to see how it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was in the group before we came on the episode and I noticed that somebody had posted. It was like a little basket. It was hard to tell where it was. I want to say it was in a retail place, but it had little notes in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was at a grocery store, okay, yeah, it just looked like a little take your number thing, yeah. And the person who did it thought, well, what is this? And opened it up and it was an inspirational note. Yeah, this is meant just for you. I hope you're having a good day. God's not done with you yet, and that was it.
Speaker 1:I love that and.
Speaker 2:I thought, wow, and I have no idea who put it there. I would love to say it was an official holy mischief maker, but it probably wasn't. And that's okay. It's just good to share those ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, for sure, yeah, and it's so cool. You talking about COVID and connection and I think and I don't know how much of your do you focus on people who don't get as much connection anymore. I think, of people, like in senior facilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't narrow it down specifically. However, what I'm finding is that we have an epidemic of loneliness, and even people who you wouldn't think would be lonely, like a school teacher, could suffer from some pretty big loneliness. Because we've lost a sense of, as we've gotten bigger, our communities are getting bigger, our cities are getting bigger We've lost the closeness of a tight knit community and it's more difficult to make friends. It's more difficult to go a little deeper in friendships because we're getting pulled in all directions. Because I go to work, I work all day, not only like for teachers.
Speaker 2:For example, not only do I have to submit a lesson plan online, but I've also got to do evaluations for each student that go to the parents and I've got to do one that gets logged in the system, and then I've got to deal with all of the emails coming in from the parent, from the school, the principal, the system that's there. I also have all the spam, because I went to a conference last year on learning and now I'm getting all of these things and then I go home and I just I kind of want to just veg for a minute and I've got my TV on, but in between the commercials I just I kind of want to just veg for a minute, and I've got my TV on, but in between the commercials I'm scrolling through something and I don't realize that now three hours have passed and I've been scrolling, or you know. Maybe it's not quite that long, but it's a lot longer.
Speaker 2:There's so many things vying for our attention that we don't pause to make that community happen. So you know, I would say sometimes not all the time, but sometimes people in an assisted living program actually get more community than some of the rest. I know that's a very blanket generalization that I can't necessarily back up, but in a good program where they are very conscious of making sure that people are socialized. That could actually be a lot more beneficial than someone who's in a neighborhood but never sees their neighbors.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. And you're absolutely right about the epidemic of loneliness, though, because and I need to do another episode on that, maybe I'll have you on just talk about that, because it really is a thing and it's horrible.
Speaker 2:It's worse than smoking.
Speaker 1:It is, it's worse for your health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like five times worse than smoking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that. Was it the Surgeon General? Surgeon General, yeah.
Speaker 2:Wrote a very easy to read book, Like it's not super advanced science, you can read it, but it's really really good and it talks about the things that we could do. And you know, like I said, I have a online movement, but online is not necessarily the thing that we need to focus on. It really is the movement and the connections that happen offline that need to be focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and if you want to be a part of that movement, head on over to.
Speaker 2:Facebook. Facebook and the group is Holy Misch mischief. We'll put links in yeah, yeah, I also have a website and will occasionally send out emails. I don't send a lot, so don't worry about spam. I don't sell anything typically. Occasionally I might have a t-shirt or something where the proceeds go to charity, but I usually send about one a month and it'll have some some ideas of holy mischief, because not everybody's online on on social media and I applaud those people who are doing that. Yeah, I know, you know it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's yep, I will link your website in there as well. I mean, if you, you know, maybe you just need ideas on little holy bits of holy mischief that you can get into and Reverend Dr Shannon is your gal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tell you one that I did this week. I was going to be connecting with a couple of people that worked at United Way and we were going to be meeting at one of the community college campuses here. And she's like, yeah, we're going to show up with popsicles and we're going to pass them out to students and teachers. And I was like, oh, we are, yes, we are, and so we did, and we didn't have a permit or permission, and if they said no, we would have put it back in the car, but you would have thought we were passing out gold, because you know, we live really close to Hotlanta. It is very hot here. It was 98 degrees that day and we went, like that day they purchased the popsicles.
Speaker 2:They went to Bon Pops Like they didn't just do generic, they went with yeah, it was great. Yeah, they had like a cooler with you know stuff packed around them.
Speaker 1:They had it done right, yeah. Well, you know, it's probably something that they do quite often. This is United Way, did you say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, United Way of Bartow County.
Speaker 1:They know this stuff.
Speaker 2:They do, they know their things.
Speaker 1:Well, shannon, thank you so much for being on. I really appreciate this. I am motivated now. I am inspired and you are doing such amazing work and I really, really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mike, I've really enjoyed talking about this.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. We will talk again soon and you, mike, I've really enjoyed talking about this. That's fantastic. We will talk again soon and you take care, stay cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for taking this time to listen to the episode today with my guest Shannon wait, excuse me, the Reverend Dr Shannon Carafonda Got it right again. I hope you're able to take something positive from the time that you spent here with us today. Maybe you'll be inspired, Maybe you'll be motivated, Maybe you'll be moved. If you experienced any of those positive feelings, please consider sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I am always striving to offer you a better podcast, so give me some feedback. Let me know how you think I'm doing. Whether you loved an episode or hated an episode, whether it's on YouTube or an email, just shout out, let me know and tell me how you think I'm doing. Also, make sure to follow us on all of our socials Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever. Give us a follow and interact with us in some way or form. It would mean the world. This podcast is part of the Mayday Media Network. In some way or form, it would mean the world.
Speaker 1:This podcast is part of the Mayday Media Network. If you have an idea for a podcast and need some production assistance, or you already have a podcast and you're looking for a supportive network to join, check out maydaymedianetworkcom and check out the many different shows they have, like Afrocentric Spoil, my Movie Generation Mixtape In a Pickle Radio Show, Wake Up and Dream with D'Anthony Palin, Stacks of Packs and the Time Pals. We'll be back again next week with a new episode and we would be honored if you would join us. You have been listening to the Kindness Matters podcast. I'm your host, Mike Rathbun. Have a fantastic week.
