Kindness is currency at the ‘Bank of Happiness’

Sometimes you just need a helping hand — or have a hand to offer.

At the Bank of Happiness, good deeds are both offered and requested — no cash transactions allowed.

The Estonia-based online forum was launched five years ago and now boasts more than 2,000 members from around the world.

"The Bank of Happiness was created from the ideas of ordinary people and it isn't anyone's personal ambition or business plan. The purpose of the Bank is to promote non-monetary values, in order to help people find their way back to the deeper self. The prerequisite to the operation of the Bank are real people in need and helpers, i.e. benefactors, people among us," the website outlines.

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How it works: Members register using their real names. They post what they're offering or what they're seeking, like lessons, tips or tutoring. The only catch: the deeds can't involve product or cash transactions.

"I thought, 'We need something like this Bank of Happiness, where people can meet each other and do something cool,'" founder Airi Kivi, 39, a family therapist and clinical psychologist, told NPR.

Ads are currently posted in English, German, and Estonian. The site is also translated into Spanish.

Recent ads include offers of public speaking coaching, diversity management advice and language lessons, as well as requests for operation-system installation help and advice about taking a cat outdoors.

The site has more offers of help than requests for assistance. Its founder believes that's the way it should be.

"It is refreshing to see that in our environment you can find more Offers than Needs. When browsing through them one can get the impression that there should not be a single person in Estonia who has a problem but no one to share it with – this is one of the most popular types of ads in Bank of Happiness," Kivi writes on the bank's blog.

"Aren’t we just surrounded by the nicest people?"