Youth spread kindness like confetti in Cambridge Bay

The morning after Halloween, residents in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, awoke to colourful notes telling them "Be your own kind of beautiful," "Be brave!!! Never give up!!," and "You're always loved."

The "kindness confetti" adorning telephone polls, doorways and buildings were made by local youth and posted around the community after trick-or-treaters retreated for the night.

It was an idea that Caroline Robinson, a mental health outreach worker for the Department of Health, came up with after seeing a Facebook post about a similar project in England.

"I was walking around and I was having a hard time and you know I was going through some stuff and I was sort of thinking, it would be so nice that if I looked up and somebody was there to say something nice to me, that would change my whole day," she said. 

Robinson took that idea to the local youth centre where she spoke about mental wellness and asked kids to write some positive affirmations on construction paper. At the end of one hour they had come up with 150.

"The kids started writing all these things and they came up with some very, very, very beautiful things that I was actually so surprised that it came out of the minds of people so young." 

The idea has since taken off in the hamlet. Kids have started putting notes up on lockers at the school and are planning on making even more kindness confetti.

"I think it's absolutely beautiful that they're taking cue and doing it on their own now," Robinson said.

It's also sparked the creation of a Facebook page where people can post positive messages and selfies of themselves posing with the positive messages.

Everyone who uploads a selfie and answers one of three questions — what is one thing you can do to improve your mental health? How do you support mental health? Or how can you help change the language around mental illness? — will be entered into a draw at the end of the month.

Robinson said the notes are already having a positive impact. 

"I've had a lot of people talking and saying thank you for the kind words, 'I really needed that'," she said.

"I've even had people come up to me just randomly on the street and just come up and want to give me a hug and say, 'thank you, thank you to our youth for those notes. I really needed something positive at that moment and I [saw] that note and it felt so good to read that it made me cry.'" 

With files from Rachel Zelniker and Wanda McLeod