HOLLIDAYSBURG - Kindness is spreading throughout Hollidaysburg, thanks to area kids up for a challenge.

"Oh, my goodness!" Melanie Ramsey cried out as campers from the Hollidaysburg Area YMCA Camp Chimney Rocks surprised her with a plant and a thank you card in an act of kindness Monday.

"Did you guys know this was going to happen?" the Hollidaysburg Area Public Library youth and children's services director asked the campers who rang back with a chorus of "Yes!"

"How cool is this?" she said as the group scurried together for photographs inside the library where just moments before Ramsey had sat reading to the students during a visit.

International nonprofit organization Kids for Peace's the Great Kindness Challenge took place worldwide Saturday and the Hollidaysburg Area YMCA adapted the challenge to fit the camp schedule, Hollidaysburg Area YMCA Human Resource and Volunteer Director Laurie Smith said. Five YMCA camps of 150 kids are participating.

The YMCA understands promoting volunteerism, Smith said.

"Volunteers are the heart of the YMCA," Smith said.

The one-day challenge was to perform good deeds from a list the organization suggested. The list included simple acts of kindness such as smiling at 25 people, taking a treat to local firefighters and doing a household chore without someone asking.

The challenge is a way to get kids acting out the YMCA's core values of caring, respect, responsibility and honesty, Smith said.

"We are to be role models for our youth in the community and we need to practice these core values, too," she said.

Kids also "learn to serve" and to "give without receiving," she said.

"The big lesson is treat others the way you'd like to be treated," said Camp Chimney Rocks head counselor Lindsey Griffith, who is a senior studying elementary education with a minor in music at Lock Haven University.

Griffith said camps do different themes each week, and campers had participated in a community give-back week, too.

Among the acts of kindness, YMCA campers presented Hollidaysburg Area School District food service director Sue Cox with a thank you recently. Campers also manned a lemonade stand at the YMCA, picked up trash on the playground and thanked the YMCA's maintenance staff.