What Is Let’s Be Kind?

Problem: Being unkind diminishes the student of a fun, fulfilling experience at school.

Let’s Be Kind Solution: Let’s Be Kind provides a purposeful act of kindness to create a safe unifying culture on campus.

Dream Statement: Students share a dream that one day, all school campuses will be a community of unique, talented, KIND people, working together for unity and inclusion.

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Our Story

Let’s Be Kind Started in 2018 with 200 slices of pizza and Rebekah’s desire to show kindness to her classmates on her middle school campus. From there her mom designed a small logo and Rebekah thought that it would be cool to put it on a tee and GIFT one to each of her classmates.  700 tees later the first official Let’s Be Kind Day happened on the Costa Mesa Middle School campus with hopes of beginning conversations and acts of proactive kindness with the student body.  Imagining her campus through the lens of kindness was something that propelled her to make a change. A campus where all would respect one another, teachers and students alike. A campus where all would engage in community, where they are caring for one another and encouraging one another in who they are as individuals.  The hope is that the school campus community will be proactive in spreading kindness, and as they are intentional with one another they WILL make a difference in each other’s lives.  It takes everyone actively being kind to create a movement.

Inspiration For Let’s Be Kind

In 2018 Rebekah kept coming home and asking her parents what to do about her friends that were being unkind to her.  They were not bullying her but just doing things like stepping on her shoes, calling her names and making fun of her.  For months her and her parents talked about her forgiving and moving on. She finally came home and talked to her mom and said that just forgiving her friends wasn’t working and she needed to do something. So, her mom suggested she take slices of pizza to school as an act of kindness.  She taped signs on to pizza boxes and that said “let’s be kind to each other” and that start a conversation on her school campus. That one act of kindness turned into her mom creating a logo which propelled Rebekah to dream for her campus. Rebekah came up with the t-shirt idea and she raised over $3000 in 24 that year to purchase 700 t-shirts for every student, faculty and staff member on her campus.   What inspired Rebekah was seeing every student for one day unified for one purpose. Kindness. Kindness began to break down walls that day on her campus.
Graduating from 8th grade and entering 9th as a high schooler she saw the need more than ever on the high school campus. In 2019 her friends encouraged her to do the second annual Let’s Be Kind Day on their high school campus. Rebekah rose to the challenge and in 4 weeks was able to raise over $9000 to purchase 2100 unique Let’s Be Kind Tees for every student, faculty, and staff member on both Costa Mesa Middle School and High School campuses. What started as Rebekah wanting to spread kindness on her own school campus grew by Kaiser Elementary jumping on board and joining the movement by having a Let’s Be Kind day on their elementary campus.  A combined effort to spread kindness lead to over 3000 tees being handing out on April 25, 2019.

A Letter From Our Founder

In a world where kindness seems to not be the norm, I wanted to show my fellow classmates that kindness can change our campus.  We spend 10 months out of the year together on our campus. We share our lives with each other and are a built-in community of 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders.  We should be kind to each other.

A few years ago, I lived in El Salvador and with much change came many challenges.  It taught me that kindness changes things. One of the things that stood out to me the most while living abroad was the kindness of others.  People have shown kindness to me in incredible ways and I want to give that back to the people that I get to be with everyday.

The t-shirt is designed to unify the campus as a whole.  It is a physical reminder to the student body, factually, staff and the community at large that together they can make a difference.  The phrase Let’s Be Kind calls for everyone together to be kind to themselves and to one another. The charge is to show the community that on their campus they are, a community of unique, talented, KIND people, ready to speak, and act in KINDNESS. I truly believe in the school campus! I believe that together we can be the best school campuses covered in kindness that our generation has ever seen. Let’s Be Kind!!!!

 

Rebekah

Let’s Be Kind Founder

Kindness Partners