Spreading love and kindness

Soul Gestures
Selfless. Passionate. Kind

Generous Catherine Kolomyjec helps young people shine and learn leadership skills while making the world better with her charity Soul Gestures.

Catherine co-founded the charity to inspire youth of all abilities to engage in acts of kindness that bring positivity to their community, and to realise their potential.

She was thrilled with how young people responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

They became more creative, delivering Easter goodies to a women’s refuge after restrictions derailed plans to distribute them in a hospital.

Other acts of kindness included dropping off plants and soil to a garden-loving cancer patient, sourcing goodies to decorate a young refugee’s sparse bedroom, dropping off hand-made fiddle mats for people with dementia and making up packages for exhausted nursing staff.

One of Catherine’s most rewarding moments was seeing the emotional response from the quarantined crew on the cruise ship Artania, to the 420 hand-written postcards from our local youth; “but I am just as inspired when a 12-year-old tells me "my whole body felt warm when I did something good".

Catherine is humbled to be nominated as a Westfield Local Hero. “I am continually motivated by the young people of Perth, who have an incredible ability, to engage, commit and change the world around them,” she says.

Westfield Local Heroes are nominated and voted for by their communities, with the three top finalists per Westfield centre each awarded a $10,000 grant for their affiliated organisation. Soul Gestures will use its funds to make a film written and directed by talented young people with disabilities.

For further information on the Westfield Local Heroes program, click here