The kindness of strangers: stories to lift your heart

A compassionate teacher, a woman rescued from giving birth on the pavement and 'the whole' of Liverpool searching for a lost boy, these are just some of the stories that will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside...

The little lost boy

You can imagine how panicked Emma Garner was when her 3-year-old son disappeared in Liverpool’s town centre.

What she didn’t expect was quite how many people would help her look for her little boy. Hundreds of people in the street started searching for Leon and, before long, he was found safe and sound.

She took to Facebook to express her gratitude to all of the people who had literally run around to find her son: "My heart was broken as he ran off and out of sight and didn't come back. But the people of Liverpool – strangers who know know nothing of me or my family – stopped in their tracks to help me find him…”

Read more on this, including Emma’s Facebook post in full

The firefighter who delivered a baby

Firefighter Rob Nulty came to the rescue of an 18-year-old woman who was giving birth on the street.

The young mum-to-be went into labour by the side of the road in Dublin, and, with no time to get her to a hospital, Rob put her in the back of his fire engine so she could give birth there.

"She had to pull her trousers down and push straight away," he said.

"The head appeared. It took three pushes and the baby was out. We had to carefully guide him out.

"Then we wrapped the baby in a fire blanket while we made our way to the hospital."

Read Rob's story

The teacher who turned babysitter

A single student mum in the US was let down by her babysitter and took her baby along to her lecture, hoping he'd stay nice and quiet.

But her baby started crying, and we suspect she thought something along the lines of ‘Oh well, at least I tried', as she got up to leave.

But her teacher wasn't having any of it. He just picked up the baby, jiggled him up and down to calm his tears and then propped him in his arms and carried on teaching. What a pro!

Want to know more about this cool teacher?

The boy who bought a homeless man dinner

We love the inquisitive nature of a 5-year-old. Josian Duncan was going for lunch with his mum at a Waffle House in Alabama, US, when he noticed a homeless man and began quizzing his mum as to why he was outside and why he wasn’t going to eat in the restaurant.

His mum explained he had no money, so the little boy insisted his mum bought him a meal.

The little boy was so concerned when the waiters didn't exactly rush over and give him the homeless man a menu, he took one over himself. Ah bless...

Read more about Josian's story

The boy who moved the mum of a disabled son to tears

A young boy made one mum's day when he took time to play with her son, who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), at a science museum. She felt compelled to pen an open letter on Facebook to say thank you:

"To the little boy at the science museum, I don't know who you are, but thank you for being amazing," she wrote on Facebook. "You let my son play and engage with you. You helped him pick up balls from the floor when you saw that he could not. You didn't ask what was wrong with him or why he couldn't walk; you just saw him.

"Kaden is a lot like you. He is very curious and wildly smart. He wants to know how everything works. Thank you for helping him turn the lever when you noticed he was too weak to do it himself. You will probably never see this but, just by being you, you make this world better."

Read more about Kaden's kind playmate