Rosa Annie Jiggetts is always ready to help.

Her idea of a perfect day is one in which she can do at least one good deed.

For the past 30 years, the 65-year-old Richmond native has run the Helpline out of her Providence Park home on North Side, with the assistance of her sister, Lydia.

The Jiggetts take calls from people needing advice or a kind word.

They also get calls from desperate people seeking help with unpaid utility bills, worried people facing eviction or anxious people seeking a companion for an elderly family member.

The response to such calls is always the same: “Let me see what I can do.”

And often she will come up with a solution for the problem — whether it’s money or a place to stay or helpful information. She also has been a volunteer extraordinaire for people- helping groups such as Boaz & Ruth on North Side that offers jobs and hope to people seeking to start over after release from incarceration.

Her enthusiasm and spirit are among the reasons she was honored as the state’s Outstanding Volunteer in 2004 by then-Gov. Mark R. Warner.

Thus, the retired nurse who began providing in-home hospice care in Richmond more than 35 years ago brings plenty of credentials to her latest venture — to boost the amount of kindness in the world.

She’s on a quest to have every Wednesday do double duty as “Be Kind Wednesday.”

Ms. Jiggetts has started an online petition drive on Facebook asking people to join her in urging President Obama to proclaim Be Kind Wednesdays.

She also has contacted the United Nations about the project and now is working to get a Be Kind Wednesdays proclamation on the U.N. General Assembly’s agenda.

In her view, the world would be a better place if people took time to smile at strangers or to offer a helping hand to others — at least one day a week.

She believes that if the kindness approach became ingrained, fewer people would wind up behind bars for committing what she calls “unkind acts” and fewer children would be suspended from school for misbehavior.

Ms. Jiggetts already has made a start on creating Be Kind Wednesdays. Last year, Richmond City Council approved a resolution that designates Wednesday as a day for residents “to do something kind for a friend or a stranger, to give generously and donate to a good cause, to be kind to family or to reach out to someone having a hard time or a bad day.” She also is using the Be Kind slogan to undertake other proj- ects, including asking people to give her their mothballed musical instruments so she can donate them to Richmond’s elementary schools.

Now she’s seeking 20,000 signatures on the petition for the president to spread the concept across the country. Ms. Jiggetts says she is just following in the footsteps of her late father, Forrest Jiggets Sr., who operated a market in the Washington Park community.

“He would give you the shirt off his back,” she says. She found that out when she looked at the books of the grocery story he operated in the Washington Park neighborhood on North Side.

She discovered that his customers owed him $100,000 for all he had allowed them to buy on credit when he shut the door for the last time in the early 1970s after the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority took the store by eminent domain.

“He never worried about collecting the money,” Ms. Jiggetts said. “That was just his way. He never turned anyone down.” Ms. Jiggetts says her father had the right approach. “If I don’t help people, there will be no one to help me when I fall down. There is just one world, and we are our brother’s keeper.”

A close-up of this week’s Personality, Rosa A. Jiggetts:

Place of birth: Richmond.

Education: Graduate of Maggie L. Walker High School; attended nursing school at the University of Virginia.

Family: Two brothers and my sister, Lydia, who lives with me.

Occupation: Retired private- duty nurse. I provided in-home hospice care for terminally ill people for more than 35 years. I retired in 2008. For years, I also sold candy at John Marshall High School and was known as “The Candy Lady.” I also pioneered food vending in Richmond. I operated a bus from which I sold fresh vegetables and fish. In the 1970s, I got City Council to approve a law allowing this kind of selling to end police harassment.

What I like most about retirement: The extra time it gives me to volunteer and be involved in the mission of helping others.

Other volunteer efforts: My sister and I volunteer with Boaz & Ruth in Highland Park. I helped Martha Rollins to bring this resource to our community to assist people returning from jail to start over. I started the Neighborhood Watch in our community.

Current top volunteer project:

Be Kind Wednesdays. Meaning: To encourage people to smile and do acts of kindness at least once each week.

Progress to date: Secured passage of a City Council resolution in 2014 that encourages every citizen to do random acts of kindness on Wednesday. Council members Ellen F. Robertson and Parker C. Agelasto co-sponsored the resolution.

Top accomplishment:

Collecting donated musical instruments for elementary schoolchildren in Richmond. Be Kind instruments already have been donated to Linwood Holton and Ginter Park elementary schools. I am now seeking instruments to donate to the other

elementary schools for students who want to learn to play.

How I came up with the idea: I came up with the idea some years ago while attending a community meeting on a Wednesday. Then- Richmond Police Chief Marty Tapscott spoke about the need to defuse the time-bomb of anger so many people walked around with and that too often explodes into fights and even killings. I thought why not designate one day a week as a day of kindness to help with that problem.

How I got City of Richmond officials involved: I told them what I was doing and asked for their support. Past Mayors Rudy C. McCollum and L. Douglas Wilder issued proclamations to support Be Kind Wednesdays. But I realized that something more was needed since proclamations end when a new mayor takes over. That’s why I sought to get a resolution passed that would last forever.

What motivated me to get involved in community service: I come from a family of givers. My grandfather, the Rev. William Edward Trent, went door to door to raise money to build Trinity and Greater Mount Moriah churches. He and my grandmother, Annie, also walked from Downtown to Mechanicsville to personally build Springfield Baptist Church. My father, Forrest “Jack Crab” Jiggetts, offered credit in his market. He would put up his store to provide bail. When he turned off the lights on his store after 33 years, he had $100,000 in uncollected payments. He always said that if you have a loaf of bread, you have to share it.

Practicing acts of kindness involves: It’s pretty simple. Just treat people as you would want to be treated. You don’t have to do much if you don’t want to. One example, just give someone a smile to cheer them up. Pitch in when you can to help lift someone up.

Best late-night snack: Short- bread cookies.

If I could have one wish, it would be: That people will treat each other right every day, not just on Wednesdays.

I am most discouraged by:

People who see where they could help, but do nothing. That grieves me.

Perfect day: When I have helped someone.

Person who influenced me the most: My sister, Lydia. She is my inspiration. She is the smartest person I know. She studied economics and math at Virginia State University and was a bank analyst. She has gone blind, but she is always doing something to help someone. That includes taking the calls on the Helpline at 321-8989.

Next goal: To make Be Kind Wednesdays an international way of life. Being kind is good for business. It is good for people. Being kind would reduce our jail populations because every crime is an unkind act. Teaching our children to be kind would reduce unruly student behavior in our schools and mean more resources could go into education instead of being spent on dealing with misbehavior.