12 Days of Positivity coming back this fall

Captain Positive and OptiWoman are gearing up for another Positivity Day in CK in hopes of brightening the spirits of residents.

Going into its fourth year, Positivity Day has now morphed into nearly two weeks of celebration with the 12 Days of Positivity. The goal of the 12 Days of Positivity is to encourage an optimistic attitude for people of all ages and to make Chatham-Kent a more positive place overall. The campaign got kicked off with launch event Monday morning at the TekSavvy office in Chatham.

"It just seems to get bigger and bigger every year," said OptiWoman. "What other city do you know in the world where they take 12 days and the whole entire city gets together and does a positivity movement?"

The 12 Days of Positivity will kick off on Monday, September 23 with Neighbour Day. People are encouraged to take out time to say hello to their neighbours instead of just briefly waving to them or even take it a step further by organizing a neighbourhood party. Other highlights of the 12-day initiative include Seniors Day, Diversity Day and Support a Local Business Day.

Captain Positive and OptiWoman stay busy throughout the remainder of the year by promoting their message at schools across the municipality and attending community events. According to Captain Positive, they've begun to notice a positive shift in attitude since they first started their mission.

"I can't tell you how many stories we've had from adults that said...our movement has changed their lives. We just sit and talk to them in the park, maybe for five minutes and we can change their mindset," he said. "Every day you wake up, you have a choice, you can be positive or negative and we've had quite a few individuals who said we changed the way they thought in life and that's pretty remarkable."

During this year's 12 Days of Positivity, former Positivity Day co-chair, Mayor Darrin Canniff is urging local businesses to share their own stories of positivity.

"Virtually every business in Chatham-Kent does something or a lot of things in the community. We want to hear about them," said Canniff. "We want to be able to document them. So in those 12 days, if you've got a fundraiser going on if you're doing this, doing that, let's hear about it."

According to Captain Positive, there are lots of ways for companies to get involved.

"Maybe the managers of the business, you can do something for your employees that day, do something special....it could be something as simple as writing a positive note to the person who sits beside you. It could be a big event," said Captain Positive. "We're looking for new ideas. We want people to come up with their own ideas and share it with us. Because then other businesses will see that and say 'hey, we can do that too'... really there's no reason why every business in Chatham-Kent can't do something on one of those 12 days."

The 12 Days of Positivity will be capped off with a free Positivity Day event on Friday, October 4 at the Capitol Theatre. During the event, one person will win a $10,000 grand prize. The winner will be chosen from 455 tickets that will be given out to people to are recognized for doing acts of positivity across the municipality.

"We hand out tickets to all the media outlets and OptiWoman and myself will also hand out tickets. If we see something positive happening on the street, we can go out and hand someone a ticket," said Captain Positive. "It's as simple as that."

Below is a list of the 12 Days of Positivity initiatives happening this year in Chatham-Kent :

Neighbour Day – Monday, September 23 Service Club Day – Tuesday, Service Club Day, September 24 Seniors Day – Wednesday, September 25 First Responder Health Care Day – Thursday, September 26 Not-For-Profit and Charity Day – Friday, September 27 Support Your Local Business Day – Saturday, September, 28 Discover Your Community Day- Sunday, September 29 Agriculture Day- Monday, September 30 Diversity Day- Tuesday, October 1 Educators/Instructors Day- Wednesday, October 2 Environment Day – Thursday, October 3 Positivity Day– Friday, October 4