If you see a helpless boy freezing in the cold alone and without a coat, what would you do? Would you stop by and give him your scarf, jacket or gloves to make him warm?
While we may have seen several videos in the past that depict people's cold-heartedness and lack of concern for others, a new video recording by hidden camera, of strangers giving their scarf, jacket and gloves to a boy shivering in cold at a bus stop in Norway, without a jacket, suggests that there are still people who do care and are compassionate enough to help children who are in need, that there is still hope for humanity after all.
The boy in the video may look cold (and he really was) but he was actually a volunteer for an experiment by the SOS Children's Villages International charity in Norway for its campaign to provide warm clothing and mattresses to children who have been displaced by the civil war in Syria. The charity wanted to assess how the public would react to helping Syrian children, with an experiment that involved a Norwegian boy shivering in a winter cold bus stop without a jacket.
Temperatures are below freezing during winter in Syria and many of the 6 .5 million displaced Syrians are without their homes and without winter clothing. The SOS Children's Villages International in Norway wanted to know how many would help a shivering boy at a bus stop as this could give an idea whether or not Norwegians would be willing to help the children in Syria.
"It's a campaign to raise awareness of people in Syria," said Synne Rønning, the information head of SOS Children's Villages Norway. "People should care as much about children in Syria as they care about this boy at the bus top. The situation in Syria is very harsh."
It appears Norwegians do care. Eleven-year old Johannes Lønnestad Flaaten, who volunteered for the experiment, said that most of the people who came and sat by him at the bus stop wanted to help. "There were so many nice people," he said. "We filmed for two days, and I thought maybe only three or four of them would give me their jacket altogether. But there are many more who did it. Many more than those who are shown in the video."
Rønning said that while the boy got a small salary from his "acting job", he did it for the children in Syria. Watch the video here:
