Woman travels Minnesota and Iowa to spread kindness

A woman traveling across Minnesota and Iowa is turning kindness into a public campaign, and the idea fits easily in Otter Tail County, where service often shows up in concrete ways. In Perham, Love INC’s Giving Tree started with the names of 192 children from 60 families inside the Perham-Dent School District boundaries, a reminder that local generosity is measured in coats, gifts and help that reaches families directly.

That same community instinct has shown up in schools and neighborhoods across the county. Prairie Wind Middle School in Perham marked Random Acts of Kindness Week in February 2020 by collecting 700 non-perishable food items for the Bridge Community Pantry. Mr. Dierkhising’s class brought in the most donations, showing how even a classroom project can ripple outward into real food on pantry shelves.

The kindness travel story also lands in a news ecosystem that has kept close watch on local service for years. Perham Focus began publishing weekly in January 2013 and remains part of the county’s local-news fabric, regularly covering the kinds of efforts that matter in a lakes-region community where neighbors often know one another by name. That includes recent profiles of people remembered for kindness and generosity, along with holiday and school-based giving campaigns that turn good intentions into specific help.

In west-central Minnesota, those efforts matter because they fill gaps that bigger systems often miss. Otter Tail County has built a reputation around small-town civic life and volunteer spirit, and organizations such as Love INC and Bridge Community Pantry rely on that support when families need food, gifts or a little extra help getting through the season. The woman’s trip across Minnesota and Iowa puts a wider spotlight on that same impulse, but in Perham and nearby towns, the values behind it are already part of everyday life.