OUR STORY
It all started IN 2012 when...
Alex Radelich was sitting in his dorm room at Purdue University after finishing an exhausting week of final exams. In an attempt to wind down after the long semester, he flipped on the television and began watching Evan Almighty, a movie starring Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman. There’s a point in the film in which Carell asks “How can we change the world?”, to which Morgan Freeman replies, “One act of random kindness at a time.”
It was this cheesy, yet somewhat profound movie scene that inspired Alex to make a change. He immediately recorded a video as an experiment to see if others would be interested in joining him to attempt to explore kindness in our society. Within the first 24 hours of recording the video, he was contacted by people in countries all over the world, including Russia, Brazil, and Canada. Alex then recruited his best friend Dalton, sold some personal belongings, ordered some pay-it-forward cards, and started a website aimed at creating a community of people dedicated to spreading kindness. It was originally known as ARK Project Now.
Not knowing the best way to spread kindness, Alex and Dalton decided that they might as well figure it out by taking a road trip for Spring Break. The two packed up Dalton's mom's purple minivan and hit the road. At each new stop, they would try to their best at spreading kindness (which admittedly wasn't very good back then), and then would flip a coin to decide which city to visit next. During their short week on living on the road, they were able to see the power of kindness and the thrill of adventure. They were hooked.
In Summer of 2014, Alex and Dalton recruited a few friends and purchased a 1994 piece-of-junk Damon Intruder RV that they paid for by selling ad space on the side. The group traveled 6,000 miles in 6 weeks from their home in Indiana, west to California, up the coast, and back. Along the way, their acts of kindness gained nationwide attention and were featured on dozens of national media outlets including the Today Show, Steve Harvey Show, and USA Today.
The RV industry took notice as well and wanted to join in on the kindness. Several manufacturers came together and donated a custom built, brand new RV... completely for free! Since that time, the team has completed two more national tours, traveled thousands of miles, and impacted thousands of people around the U.S., but their mission remains the same as it was in the beginning - to make the world a better place, one act of random kindness at a time.
In May 2016, Alex and Dalton relocated from Indiana to Los Angeles, and ARK Project Now was rebranded to Explore Kindness. Now, they are focusing on giving other people the opportunity to Explore Kindness for themselves. If you would like to get involved, please visit the Explore tab to learn more!
Some of our work:
