Town, school take on kindness — Texas style

You can’t have too much kindness.

With that in mind, the Hope Kindness Community in Trophy Club is working with the Northwest School District and the town to spread as much of it as possible during the month of February with Campaign 4 Kindness.

“This addresses everything. Being kind is free,” said Alicia Fleury, Hope Kindness Commity board member.

National Kindness Week is Feb. 12-18.

The national organization Think Kindness also has come onboard for the event. Founder Brian Williams said although the organization visits hundreds of schools each year, this is the first time an entire community has come together for such an effort.

“Only in Texas do they go this big,” Williams said

Four Northwest School District campuses that are in Trophy Club will take on the challenge to perform 5,000 random acts of kindness over the remainder of the month. This can be anything from opening a door for another to picking up a dropped pen, or even giving someone a smile.

“Most only cost a little of your time and may require you to step outside your comfort zone,” event chairman Ann DeCapite said. “Trust me, the payoff for kindness is big for the giver and receiver, and always worth it.”

Think Kindness will conduct a presentation for students, teachers and administration at Beck Elementary, Lakeview Elementary, Medlin Middle School and Bryon Nelson High School. They also will conduct a parents assembly at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at Byron Nelson.

“In society right now, it’s not that we don’t want to remember others in random acts of kindness, rather we are often too busy,” said Jamie Farber, Northwest’s director of guidance and counseling.

Campaign 4 Kindness provides a reminder, Farber said.

“It’s pretty cool hearing all the buzz about what’s coming up for Kindness Month. We’re already hanging posters in our classrooms,” said J.P. Maricle, a Byron Nelson student.

Not only is the event designed to get folks in Trophy Club to be kind to each other, it is helping children elsewhere in the world. Members of the community are asked to donate new and gently used sneakers in collection boxes throughout town as part of the Got Sneakers campaign. The shoes will be donated to orphanages in Africa.

The free Feb. 17 Fun Run 4 Kindness begins at 8 a.m. at Byron Nelson High School, 2775 Bobcat Blvd.

Fleury said the Hope Kindness Community was created in September in response to several student suicides in the area. She said the idea was to bring the community together to talk about topics that some might consider taboo.

“We take our kids in for annual football physicals, but do we take them in for an annual health checkup?” she said. “If you fail a test, it’s not the end of the world. If you don’t make the team, it’s not the end of the world.”

She said part of the group’s mission is to get people, especially youngsters, to open up and be honest about things in their life, to deal with things such as death, including suicide.

“We can’t say, ‘Faith died last week.’ We have to say ‘Faith committed suicide last week,’” she said. “We have to be honest and talk about it.”

And though she said none of the suicides are known to have been connected to bullying, that is also a subject with which kindness can help.

“We’re not going to eradicate bullying, but we can learn how to handle it better,” Fleury said. “We can help kids cope with it more.

“It all comes under the umbrella of kindness. Hopefully, it will catch on and we’ll have less of these bad things.”

Trophy Club Mayor Nick Sanders and the town council proclaimed February as Kindness Awareness Month.

“We encourage our residents to participate in Campaign 4 Kindness in the spirit of compassion, kindness, and good will toward all persons,” he said.

“When we all come together, big things happen,” said Byron Nelson Parent-Teacher-Student Association president Karen Williams. “Our town is amazing, and we want to show how many people here support being kind to one another, globally as well as locally.”

Fleury said the hope is other communities will see what is happening in Trophy Club and have similar events.

“We are hoping with this inaugural event word will get out and we will be approaching other communities next year and in years to come,” she said. “Who doesn’t want a little more kindness in the world?”

For more information about the Trophy Club Campaign 4 Kindness and to download the Daily Kindness Challenge Calendar, visit https://hopekindnesscommunity.org/campaign-4-kindness.

This story was originally published February 14, 2018 at 3:39 PM with the headline "Town, school take on kindness — Texas style."