POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS
We’re announcing something new today … the birth of our “Humanity Club” for kids. It’s a program that allows us to teach student leaders about ideas such as self-value, leadership, diversity and compassion. We work with the students to develop creative methods to carry those ideas to their fellow students, showing their peers why every kid at their school should feel like they belong. It’s another example of our Humanity Project slogan in action, “Helping kids to help kids.” It is the Humanity Project leading a small group of kids who will assist many of their fellow students in valuable ways.
First meeting of the new Humanity Club
We’ve already launched our very first Humanity Club, with a little help from our friends. Gulfstream Middle School is part of the nation’s sixth largest school district here in Broward County, Florida, where the Humanity Project is based. The good folks at Gulfstream are giving us the chance to develop this compassionate form of leadership in six of their student leaders — great kids … We are impressed so far with their intelligence and potential to make these ideas stick with their peers all around Gulfstream. In addition to Assistant Principal Christine Moss, we’re getting important help from Jamie Wood at Memorial Healthcare System. Memorial is the parent of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, a longtime Humanity Project sponsor and partner. Our thanks to Christine and Jamie, as well as other folks at Memorial Healthcare who helped us get going including Tim Curtin and Marilyn Camerota. And of course we appreciate the consistent support of Milin Espino and Jennifer Belyeu at Memorial as always.
We’ll be telling you more about our Humanity Club in the coming weeks. What we’re doing, how it’s going. But we can’t finish this blog without a big shoutout to another amazing Humanity Project sponsor and partner of long standing: State Farm. Our Humanity Club is a live version of our innovative www.thp4kids.com website, which was created by teens for their peers over a three-year period. This web project wouldn’t have had the same success without a major national grant from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board. We thank State Farm, their great YAB and our wonderful local State Farm partner, Jose Soto, for supporting our vision: Making a website that serves as an online friend for socially isolated teens, including many LGBT students. The Humanity Club will become an extension of the positive ideas on that site, a live format for connecting with every student about the importance of self-value.
Finally, a big thanks to two of the Humanity Project’s own Board of Directors members, Stephanie Wong who really created the Humanity Club, and Ferial Youakim, who’s contributing to our in-school sessions with the kids at Gulfstream. It is truly a team effort. We believe our Humanity Club can help us to help many kids at Gulfstream Middle School — and beyond. It is an opportunity to create an environment of cooperation among young students, to show them why every kid in their school deserves respect and appreciation.
