Rexburg Man Spreads Random Acts of Kindness
A Rexburg man is offering random acts of kindness and he is not doing it alone!
Matt Profaizer and his long-time friend, Colton Abplanalp, co-founded “The Pursuit of Restoring Faith in Humanity“.
Profazier said he quit his day job as a carpet cleaner to pursue his passion for giving back to people.
“The way you interact with people around you, really is everything,” Profaizer said.
“Well, we actually, for a long time, we wanted to start a company. We’ve wanted to start something, but because of where we lived and what was going on in our lives, it just wasn’t possible,” he said.
It all started when he was listening to music on Pandora and the ad mentioned something about winning $17 million.
“And I thought to myself, yeah, it’d be cool to buy cars or homes or whatever and then it occurred to me that what good would that benefit anybody else”, Profaizer said, “And the next thought is donating to charity and all that.”
The idea came to him in October, 2016. He and Abplanalp launched it in November 2016.
“That 200 likes after we got our family and friends to like the page and right after that is when we did a video. It was actually just a Facebook Live video where I hopped on live and just went out and I was brushing the snow off the cars in the Rexburg Idaho Hospital,” he said.
He explains what it was like:
“There was a parking lot full of just the hospital staff and the patients that were there at midnight, right before they got off their midnight shift, and we went and cleaned all their cars off. That hit home with some people and it vent viral,” he said.
Now, with over 4 million views and about 50,000 Facebook “likes” later, Profaizer is ready to take this organization to the next level.
“A year from now, we hope to be doing a lot more speaking events. Our main focus is the youth. They are the future of our nation and if we can inspire them now, to start participating in acts of kindness, teaching them that it really is cool to be kind,” he said.
After graduation, he plans to move back home to Utah and continue to work with his organization.
“I just really hope that everybody understands it doesn’t take a lot to make a difference,” Profaizer said.
He is not stopping here. Next month, he and Abplanalp are headed to New York for a four-day collaboration with “Kids News New York” to do random acts of kindness with the kids.
While there, they will also coordinate with a yoga center to do a seminar on self-betterment and being able to help others in need.