E41: Bringing Kindness to the World One Blanket at a Time with Blankets of Hope Founders Mike and Nick Fio

Blankets of Hope Founders Mike and Nick Fio deliver blankets to homeless people during the winter and so much more! Inspired by their mission is to bring kindness to the entire world by 2025, what started out as a simple project has now become much bigger than themselves as they’re now teaching the future generation to think with a mindset of kindness and compassion, and giving back to their community through experiential learning. Fast forward to today, five years later, Blankets of Hope partner with schools in over 40 states across the U.S. and have delivered over 40,000 blankets of hope. Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation: How they got into creating the Blankets of Hope Getting support from a venture capitalist Their real mission behind this simple project How you can get involved in this project The kindness workshop: How the experiential learning works Episode Highlights: The Beginnings In 2016, they both quit their jobs in the hope of getting out of the corporate hamster wheel. For the next six months, they jumped from one project to the next until they went broke. Inspired by the idea of wanting to help a homeless guy on the subway, Nick went to GoFundMe and started writing about how he wanted to raise money to give blankets to people outside the world. Soon after, they got picked by a Californian venture capitalist. Although they grew up in a household full of Italian-Americans constantly yelling, there was an undercurrent of unconditional love they've always received. And so, they've always felt this pull to share that love with others because they felt so blessed to have it. And seeing how Italians value the concept of family. For the next six months, they jumped from one project to the next until they went broke. Then they started dreaming bigger about the impact they can make with this simple project. The Mission There is a much deeper purpose than blankets being donated to people experiencing homelessness. It's to inspire a movement of kindness and how we treat each other. People living out on the streets or in shelters need human kindness more than anyone else. The real value is in going into classrooms and teaching these students how to impact someone's life in their local community. How the School Partnership Works If you are an educator or know of an educator, or even if you are a youth leader of some sort, you can go to Blankets of Hope and schedule a time to meet with Nick. And he'll walk you through three simple steps. The first step is funding for them to be able to send you blankets. You can either donate a lump sum for those blankets which will be shipped to you or launch a fundraiser to raise that money, where they'll help you set it up. The Kindness Workshop: How the Experiential Learning Works Kids go through a guided visualization of empathy exercise. Then they would write their handwritten letters of encouragement and attach them to their blankets. Next, they’re guided through a loving-kindness meditation where they send love to themselves, to the person receiving the blankets, or their classmates. This creates an energy of love in the classroom that hopefully ripples on so they would also pass this experience. And then the teacher collects them and delivers them to a local homeless shelter. The whole workshop is done virtually.