Browse
Kind things worth half an hour
Long enough to leave the house or make something, short enough to fit either side of lunch. These usually involve one other person directly, which is what the extra twenty-five minutes buys you.
Showing 1–30 of 52 ideas
Read the form out loud for someone
Around one in six adults reads below the level most official forms are written at.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Buy from the list rather than guessing
Food banks and shelters publish exactly what they are short of. Donations that ignore it create sorting work.
Half an hourUnder $10A stranger
Give the good version away, not the worn-out one
Charity shops and refuges throw away an enormous amount of what is donated because it was not really a gift.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Offer to take another child as well
You are already doing the trip. One more in the car is the cheapest help a parent can give another parent.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor1 person did this
Notice who eats lunch at their desk every day
It is sometimes a preference and often the visible end of being outside every group in the building.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Caption the video you posted
Captions serve deaf viewers, people in loud places, and anyone watching with the sound off — which is most people.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Plan someone's first week, not their first day
Onboarding is concentrated in day one, which is the day nobody retains anything.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Check whether someone is on a social tariff
Discounted broadband, water and energy tariffs exist for low-income households and take-up is tiny.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Let a child help badly
Doing it yourself is faster every single time, and the accumulated effect of that is a teenager who cannot cook.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Be in the same room doing nothing
Children disclose things sideways, during dull shared time, not when asked directly how they are.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Check the venue before you invite someone
Asking a disabled friend to check whether somewhere works puts the whole job on the person it affects.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Learn five signs and use them
Hello, thank you, sorry, please, your name. Five signs is enough to change an encounter completely.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Tell someone about money they are entitled to
Billions in benefits, reliefs and refunds go unclaimed every year, mostly by people who do not know they qualify.
Half an hourFreeA friend
Return it better than you got it
The borrowed car with a full tank, the returned dish with something in it. The margin is what people remember.
Half an hourUnder $10A neighbor
Be the reference someone has no way of getting
Renting, banking and jobs all require a history that anyone newly arrived by definition does not have.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Tell someone how you got in
Careers look like merit from outside and like luck and contacts from inside. Saying so out loud helps someone enormously.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Pay a bit more at the place that employs people
The difference between the independent and the chain is usually small per item and decisive per year.
Half an hourUnder $10A stranger
Hand in the thing you found, properly
A dropped wallet or phone handed to the right place is the difference between a bad afternoon and a ruined month.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Write down the thing only you know
Every job has undocumented knowledge living in one head. Writing it down is a gift to a person you will never meet.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Buy the last of it at the end of market day
Unsold fresh produce at four o'clock is a loss the trader eats. Buying it is a favor disguised as a bargain.
Half an hourUnder $10A stranger
Write an actual letter
A letter can be reread, shown to visitors and kept on the mantelpiece. A text cannot do any of those things.
Half an hourUnder $10A neighbor
Bring tools out when someone is moving in
Moving day is the one day a household owns everything and can find nothing. A screwdriver at the right hour is remembered for years.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Take the notes nobody volunteered for
The admin of a meeting reliably falls to the same people. Doing it once, deliberately, breaks a pattern everybody has noticed.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Ask an older person what they used to do
Retired people are asked about their health and their grandchildren. Almost nobody asks what they were good at.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Stay with someone who has fallen
Most people who fall in public are surrounded by people who assume someone else is handling it.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Have a conversation with no illness in it
A carer's entire social life becomes updates about someone else's health. Talking about anything else is a holiday.
Half an hourFreeA caregiver
Bring food in a container they never have to return
A borrowed dish is a small ongoing debt. Food in something disposable is a gift with no strings at all.
Half an hourUnder $10A caregiver
Knock, rather than posting a leaflet
Leaflets reach people who are already connected. The person most worth inviting needs someone at the door.
Half an hourFreeA neighbor
Sit with whoever started this week
New starters eat alone for longer than anyone realizes, and decide how they feel about a place in the first fortnight.
Half an hourFreeA stranger
Stay on the call after the bad news
Redundancies and rejections are usually delivered and then immediately followed by everyone logging off.
Half an hourFreeA friend