Kindness Week now Kindness Month

Peer Helpers organized a longer activity this year for students at STA.

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by Maggie Knox, Page Designer

story by Katherine Green, photos by Maggie Knox

 

Formerly known as “Kindness Week,” Peer Helpers held “Kindness Month” throughout the month of March. During this month, Peer Helpers promoted acceptance of others and kindness among all students, according to junior Peer Helper Machella Dunlea.

“[Kindness Month] emphasizes the importance of kindness over a longer period of time and promotes treating others well indefinitely, not just for a week,” junior Peer Helper Sophia Prochnow said.

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The event was lengthened into Kindness Month because of scheduling conflicts according to Peer Helper moderator Amanda Johnson.

“There was a lot going on in the month of March, Johnson said. “The original date that Ms. Hoecker and I had scheduled wasn’t actually going to work, so we were going to have to move a lot of things around. Kindness Week was going to be broken up, so we thought, ‘Let’s just make it Kindness Month so we can get everything in that we want to.'”

In preparation for Kindness Month, Peer Helpers met multiple times since January to brainstorm different activities. As well as monthly meetings with the whole Peer Helpers group, Johnson and two senior co-presidents, Anna Meagher and Monica McGraw, have met an additional one or two times a month to organize plans for Kindness Month. These activities include a presentation of a film on autism, a Post-It wall with kind phrases written on them and a “Kindstagram” contest, among others.

The short documentary, created and presented by Just Like You Films, featured a segment at the end thanking STA for helping with its upcoming film. During Kindness Month, any donation made will go to the organization to enable the nonprofit company to make more films.

“I thought the video was really cool,” junior Peer Helper Machella Dunlea said. “It was super empowering and just really inspirational to be aware of people’s disorders and how they feel.”

On March 23, students were given the opportunity to bring in $1 to dress down the following day. This money, as well as money raised on March 31 from students buying a pizza and a cookie, will be donated to the Just Like You organization.

“Kindness shouldn’t just be a one-day or a one-week thing,” Meagher said. “Kindness Month is just a promotion that it should be a constant thing and not just a [day-long] fundraiser. It should be in their lives, a long-term thing. So expanding it from a week to a month this year, is really promoting it.”