Meet Your Australians - 2025 NSW Australian of the Year Kath Koschel. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Kindness has saved my life on many different occasions.
00:05The first time, I had just been told I'd never walk again,
00:08so I'd broken my back on the sporting field.
00:10I was pretty defeated in that moment, as you can imagine.
00:12It's a sobering reality you'd have to face into
00:14and emotions were close to the surface
00:16and I had my head in my hands with tears starting to come out of my eyes
00:20and a random stranger saw that I couldn't reach an elevator button.
00:23It was centimetres out of reach.
00:25He walked past and pressed that button for me
00:27and I hadn't realised it at the time until I heard the ping of the elevator arriving
00:31and as he walked off into the distance,
00:33I realised that that act had absolutely no meaning to him
00:36but a significant one to me.
00:38I got downstairs into my room
00:40and the tears that were escaping my eyes earlier had vanished.
00:43I got myself out of the chair,
00:45looked at myself in the mirror and told myself that I would walk again.
00:48It felt like he believed in me
00:50and I needed to believe in myself again
00:52and that's what kindness has the power to do.
00:54The Kindness Factory started almost like a bit of an online blog.
00:58It was a social media page of kindness.
01:00Simply, I recognised I'd received a ton of kindness through my periods of adversity
01:04and I wanted to pay forward the kindness that I'd received.
01:06So I started doing small things for others.
01:09I raised some money for kids in wheelchairs,
01:11bought dinner for the homeless, etc.
01:13And it got quite catchy.
01:14People from all around Australia and then the world
01:16started sending me acts of kindness.
01:18So far we've seen close to 8 million acts of kindness
01:21from all around the globe being logged on our website
01:23Through that, those acts of kindness, we've been able to collect data.
01:27What that data has allowed us to do is to co-create a kindness curriculum
01:31and that exists in three and a half thousand Aussie schools
01:34and beyond that within the university pathway in the UK
01:37and high schools in the USA as well.
01:39So that's a social and emotional learning tool
01:42that teaches the basic principles of kindness to kids.
01:45What that's doing is increasing mental health and wellness within children
01:50and allowing them to create a form of resilience that matters to them.
01:54So far we've seen a decrease in absenteeism
01:57as well as greater academic output.
01:59So when we're in a kind state, i.e. we're giving or receiving kindness
02:03we actually open up our neural pathways a little bit more within the brain
02:06and we can absorb information better as well.
02:08So we're seeing kids not only perform acts of kindness
02:11and being kind to themselves and others
02:13but they're actually growing academically in the process as well
02:16which has been something that surprised us
02:18but something that we're really proud of as well.
02:20We never know what a person's enduring
02:22and I think sometimes kindness can often be underestimated
02:25but we've had so many people tell us that kindness has saved their life.
02:28So it's fundamentally important to thriving
02:31and also to human connection in the process as well.
02:33No act of kindness is wasted.