
Kindness Influencers
Be a Kindness Influencer on Your Campus!
Being kind means doing kind. While we may have the desire or intention to be kind, our actions are when kindness actually takes place and has an effect on our environment.
We encourage you as influential students and peer leaders to promote kind behavior, recognizing that your endorsement can mean a lot. The work that you’re doing helps to establish a school-wide culture that values and rewards kindness, making it highly visible. And an increase in kind behavior on campus benefits everyone.
Here are some things you can do to influence kind behavior on your campus:
1. Kind Notes: Kind Notes provide a simple but powerful way to practice kindness skills through written communication. They can recognize a specific act of kindness, offer support, or just remind someone that they’re special. Seeing Kind Notes used regularly sends a powerful message to students, especially if older students are exchanging or keeping them on display. Set up Kind Note stations around campus or come up with your own project.
2. Be Kind Challenge: A great way to practice reflection and gratitude, record acts of kindness, and inspire others! Have slips and pens available for students, and anyone who comes to campus, to document acts of kindness. Create a chain and hang it in a place students will see every day and be able to watch it expand. Let it motivate you to recognize acts of kindness on a regular basis. Find details, instructions, and inspiration HERE.
3. Be Kind Online: Young adults spend an average of one–two hours online daily on multiple social media platforms, and the content they view and share has a strong influence on themselves and their peers. Check out our Be Kind Online Guide featuring advice from older adolescents to their younger peers, tips for developing awareness around social media, ideas for being kind online, and more.
4. Celebrate Kindness: Assuring that others feel seen and included is an important part of modelling kindness, and this can be done by calling out and celebrating kind acts. Start reading out kind acts witnessed on campus during morning announcements, begin recognizing “Caught Being Kind” moments in a public way, or create a kind student of the month program.
5. Kindness Club: Members of a kindness club lead by example. Imagine what it would feel like on the first day at a new school to see student-led kindness happening all over campus. Meet regularly to learn about the benefits of kindness together and suggest kindness initiatives to implement with support from school staff. Ideas include welcoming new students, showing appreciation for kind staff, learning to apologize, or campus cleanup/beautification.
People tend to underestimate the impact that acts of kindness may have on others. However, research shows that one act of kindness can create a ripple effect that goes on to inspire entire communities, meaning you can make a real difference. The example you set goes a long way with other students!
Share with us! Your kind messaging also makes a huge impact. Share photos of kind acts that you see, kind art that you create, or any projects that you create on campus. If you or your school use social media, tag us and have your message amplified. When you post and share about kindness, other people see it and are inspired to choose kind behavior.