BOISE, Idaho — When Rourke O’Brien moved to Boise six years ago, he noticed one thing – how nice the people in the City of Trees were. He and his wife immediately bought a house, and started thinking about ways to keep the community “nice” and make the community they were now apart of, better.
He decided to start the Boise Nice Project, which aims to keep Boise nice, especially amid its rapid growth.
“People were just so friendly,” O’Brien said. “Almost to the point to where my wife and I were looking at each other and we were like, ‘Wow, these people are really nice.’”
Boise Nice does events like picking up trash, hanging out stickers and temporary tattoos, and most recently – hanging up banners in Downtown Boise. The banners have inspirational sayings on them, and they are in five different languages. There are 50 banners altogether.
“We thought, well let’s just take these five things that we have on our website and let's make banners out of them and put them up during the summer,” O’Brien said.
In 2022, Boise State University’s Institutional Review Board surveyed 637 individuals looking for the answer to one question – why are people in Boise so nice? 57% of people said Boise is “extremely nice,” and 62% of people said Boise is the nicest city they have lived in.
“You can learn a person’s whole life story just by being in line at a grocery store here,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said this project is just aimed at encouraging people to be a little kinder to others, wave at others, smile at others, and overall, just keep Boise as nice as it already is.
“Maybe they’ll get courageous enough to wave or smile,” O’Brien said. “People generally will wave back, and it feels good. You might change someone’s day.”
Watch more Local News:
See the latest news from around the Treasure Valley and the Gem State in our YouTube playlist:
HERE ARE MORE WAYS TO GET NEWS FROM KTVB:
Download the KTVB News Mobile App
Apple iOS: Click here to download
Google Play: Click here to download
Watch news reports for FREE on YouTube: KTVB YouTube channel
Stream Live for FREE on ROKU: Add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching 'KTVB'.
Stream Live for FREE on FIRE TV: Search ‘KTVB’ and click ‘Get’ to download.