Make a Smile (:

Recently, sophomores Tiffany Chan and Karan Vasdev have created a Youtube channel called MakeASmile. This channel’s main aim right now is to make everyone in the AISG community smile through small actions such as thank you notes, setting up compliments desk and etc.

As a starting Youtube channel, MakeASmile has produced 4 videos including a channel trailer with 20 subscribers and a decent number of views on each video so far. First video added is called “Starting Small,” this video shows their classmates reaction to compliment notes they’ve received that were pinned onto the whiteboard before they walked in to the classroom. “Giving Compliments” was the second video on the playlist, in this video, Tiffany and Karan set up a compliment basket with a hidden camera that captured everyone’s reaction towards this random act of kindness. Third and last official video that they’ve uploaded is “Reaching out to cleaners.” This video targets a specific group of people – the cleaners that helped out in our school. Shown in this video was MakeASmile channel members going around school and handing out cleaners thank you notes at any given chances.

Last week in an interview with Tiffany and Karan, they’ve mentioned that they started MakeASmile channel on Youtube because firstly, they “got inspired by a channel called soul pancake. Secondly, they “wanted to do nice things and positively influence our school environment,” Lastly, Tiffany also added, “We personally think that it’s awesome to see others happy. It makes us feel very accomplished and happy inside too.” As a channel that was created kind of just out of the blues, people held different opinions toward it. As one of the main creator of the channel, Tiffany said a lot of of people was very confused at first, she then stated that “everyone started questioning us and asking us why we did it because they thought it was some sort of project. People just couldn’t believe that a couple of people would go around doing nice things just to make people happier without any gain. After a while, people started to like and accept that people can do good things without reasons.” To conclude the interview, I asked Tiffany and Karan their plans for this channel in the future, Tiffany answered the question by saying “Our plans for the channel in the future is to continue spreading kindness and happiness around the school, and hopefully one day to the world. To make this school environment better and to change the minds of some people. To see more people being happy and hopefully we’ll get more subscribers and that this channel can be bigger and bigger.”

Creating a new channel on Youtube can be challenging, in the beginning both Tiffany and Karan “wanted to try something like this for a long time, but didn’t have the guts to.” However, both of them overcame their fear and formed the channel. Although it might seem weird to some people that chasing after teachers and ayis around school is weird, as a community, we should all help to spread and promote Tiffany and Karan’s MakeASmile channel as well as the importance of random acts of kindness.