On the morning of Friday, Jan. 30, students entering school were greeted by AV’s Leadership class with flowers and lollipops to promote kindness. The Great Kindness Challenge presented by Kids For Peace, is an organization promoting love and peace through the actions of future generations.
“When you spread kindness, it just brightens everyone’s day. For example, this morning, when I walked into school, I was dreading my lab practical, but now I feel happier…It inspires me to be [kinder] to others and have a brighter outlook on the day,” said Natalia Bharaj.
Show Your Kind
The Great Kindness Challenge and its projects have reached twenty-one million students and forty-three thousand schools, accumulating to over one billion acts of kindness in 135 countries. The theme of this year’s Great Kindness Challenge is “Show Us Your Kind,” including kind smiles, kind hearts, and kind actions. Leadership creatively leaned into the theme by handing out the flowers to students to bring smiles to their faces.
“A lot of these students are unaware that things like this happen at our school so it’s nice to see them surprised when they receive a free lollipop,” said Leadership student Diego Laredo (‘26).
Establishing Stronger Connections
Kids for Peace founders Jill McManigal and Danielle Gram believe that kindness unites communities and ultimately leads to happiness worldwide. This belief was shared by Leadership students as they celebrated the challenge.
“I think kindness is a simple thing every human should do. It’s a necessity, and without it, we wouldn’t be a true community,” said Leadership student Courtney Widiarto (‘27).
Nearly everyone agrees that strengthening the community is an important thing to do at schools. At Amador, students believe that kindness can promote togetherness by fostering connection.
“[Kindness] makes us bond…I feel like right now a lot of people are in their own friend groups. But if we’re more kind to each other, it can create one big group,” said Bharaj.
The Ripple Effect
The Great Kindness Challenge not only unites schools and people. Along with making people feel like they belong, it can help them start their day with a positive mindset before coming to school.
“Doing these kinds of things in the morning makes people feel more motivated for school,” said Widiarto.
Leadership’s actions had a lasting impact on the entire day even though students passed out flowers in the morning. Students realized that one act of kindness can have a ripple effect at Amador.
“Helping others can help people see how being kind has a positive impact, and then they can step forward and help others too,” said Arpita Bongale (‘28).
