On Tuesday, I got to join 15 local love warriors at a middle school in San Jose for a Kindness Circle to kick-start their school-wide 21-day Kindness Challenge!

Here's a photo slideshow of the day: 

     

So many incredible moments. At one point, we all split up into classrooms for a gratitude card activity. Our classroom was brimming with kindness stories. The kids couldn’t stop raising their hands and sharing their experiences of kindness. One girl talked about inviting a homeless couple to eat pizza with her and her friend, another girl talked about how someone anonymously paid for her aunt’s funeral because her family couldn’t afford it, another student talked about asking her dad to order an extra meal for a homeless man sitting outside the restaurant and how blessed she felt being able to give it to him. The kids spoke openly about their experiences of kindness, gifted each other gratitude cards, and happily took flowers to gift to their friends. I was tearing up the entire time!

Today, the school principal wrote this enthused update:

"Day 2 went real well. The students and teachers are totally into the kindness challenge. We’re talking about it in class and after meditation, so the kids are getting lots of reminders. Early this morning some of the students made some posters with pictures from our celebration and hung them around the school. Two students then offered to water all the flower boxes, and another one helped take down all the old posters. … Liking that kindness stuff!"



Much gratitude to all-- and in particular to Anne for bringing us together in such a labor of love spirit-- from baking vegan cookies to hand-crafting hundreds of cards for the activities to laddering us all throughout the day! More stories to come soon... :)