Dignity Health Mercy and Memorial Hospitals held its first-ever Walk for Human Kindness event at Cal State Bakersfield on Oct. 18. 

The march aimed for a celebration of diversity and encouragement of different communities to come together and create a kinder community.

“Bakersfield is a diverse community. People come from different groups, different ethnicities. But in the end of the day we are one,” said Dr. Matah Singh, a physician at Dignity Health. “There is a lot of violence going on in the world. We have to stop it. The only way to stop it if there is love in the community. So, get out. Come to know each other. Love each other. That is what the message is.”

Singh said he learned to relieve his stress levels with kindness at the hospital.

Bakersfield College Renegade softball team and head softball coach, Casey Goodman, was one of the many who came out to show support for the walk. 

Goodman said she thought the event was a “big deal” for her girls. They could to interact and get more involved with the community, do something other than worrying about their sport. “[Gives] our athletics an outlook they may not have before and really gives us an opportunity to learn about… the different communities.”

Special guest speaker Blaine Hodge came out for the March for Human Kindness to give his viewpoint of what human kindness meant to him.

Hodge is known as the Starbucks hero from news outlets and the Bakersfield community. He stepped out to protect a woman who was being attacked by a man with a machete in a local Starbucks last September. Hodge was recently released from the hospital from stab wounds and just had his cast taken off the day before the march.

Hodge said he is not here at the march to talk about what he went through but here to serve and help his community any way he can. 

“Human kindness to me is the little things that we as people do to make not only our community but the entire world a better place. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that human kindness is saving someone’s life because it’s not. It’s the smaller thoughts that come before that,” Hodge expressed he has to do what he feels what’s right in his heart. “It’s a simple thought and if it’s used on a regular basis that can prep our minds to do whatever it takes to help someone in need.”