The Giving Season -- Please Help

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Since at least the time of Dickens, this has been the season of giving. To quote that master writer’s A Christmas Carol: “At this festive season of the year … it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute.” We couldn’t agree more. But with the passing of many years, the holidays have become a season of helping other kinds of charities and nonprofits as well. Now there’s even a day dedicated to charitable donations, “Giving Tuesday.” This year Giving Tuesday happens on November 29.

We hope you will consider the Humanity Project as you mull your holiday contributions.

You may already know that we have earned the Gold Seal of Transparency from GuideStar/Candid, the highly respected nonprofit information service. And perhaps you’re also aware that our acclaimed programs help both kids and adults for free — we never charge for our programs or other materials. You may not realize, though, that nearly 100% of our funding goes toward program-related expenses. That’s very unusual in the nonprofit world and we’re proud of it.

You might like to read a few of the many many testimonials the Humanity Project has accumulated during our 17-year history: Read testimonials. Or look over our programs, videos, writings, blogs and more on this website. Maybe you’d also like to sign our popular Pledge for Humanity. Then, we hope, you may consider visiting our safe secure online Donate page: Visit our Donate page.

We believe the Humanity Project is a special organization of dedicated and experienced individuals working toward a highly valuable goal: “Equality For Each, Respect For All.” And we are deeply grateful to the companies and foundations and other organizations as well as all the people who make our work possible through their contributions. If you can, we hope you’ll join us.

Our 15th Anniversary!

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On November 3, 2020, the Humanity Project turns 15! We are proud that our values, programs and ideas have proven lasting. And we’re very grateful to every person and organization that has supported our work. A special shoutout in that context to State Farm, Our Fund, Children’s Services Council of Broward County, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital and Google, among others.

As we look forward to the next 15 years, we also feel pride in the continuing improvement of our organization. Our mission statement has been thoroughly rewritten several times and our motto updated to be as clear, concise and effective as possible. Our Board of Directors and Leadership Council as well as our founder, Bob Knotts, all believe the current mission and motto at last make very plain what we’re fundamentally about. Our mission: “Instilling greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity.” Our motto: “Equality For Each, Respect For All.” We see ourselves as spokespeople for humanity itself, reminding folks in our challenging world that despite all the conflicts and tragedies, among the many setbacks and losses, humanity continues its unsteady advance toward fulfillment. As a species, we are on the march toward equality for each, respect for all. Look around you — you will see the progress in major areas of our lives. Grand advances in human knowledge, major strides in access to water and food for everyone, progress in racial and religious and gender and LGBTQ equality. The work is far far from done, obviously. But step by slow step, humanity is gaining ground … “advancing on Chaos and the Dark,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed it.

You may ask yourself, “What right does the Humanity Project have speaking for humanity? Who are they?” To which we reply, “We have every right, as do you. We are all human beings. We are members of the species Homo sapiens — and our membership automatically grants us the privilege to speak about human life as we see it.” We think a deep belief in humanity fosters belief in the individual human being. And in ourselves as individuals. And this strengthens humanity’s drive toward greater fulfillment of our best traits and abilities.

We take a long view of human history. If you try this for yourself, you’re likely to find it comforting. We each tend to become so lost in the daily flow of dispiriting news, political conflicts and disrespectful words and rampant inequality, that our minds easily lose a more accurate perspective. As Dr. Martin Luther King famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And it also bends toward understanding, wisdom … and spectacular achievement. You and your family and your friends and all of us are the inheritors of a tradition that includes the Mona Lisa and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the Parthenon and Petra, Hamlet and Ulysses and Moby Dick. We have stamped our footprints in the dusts of the moon, snapped photographs of galaxies and black holes, launched probes that have passed out of our own solar system toward destinations yet unknown. We have wiped out whole diseases, improved treatments of others. We have traced the obscure records of our history and envisioned ambitious paths to our future. We have gifts not granted to any other species, including the power and flexibility of our imaginations and an extraordinary adaptability.

We are humanity. So are you.

And we also are the Humanity Project. Yes, we’re justifiably proud of all we’ve accomplished in the past 15 years, including the nation’s first mass march against bullying and other large-scale events; effective programs that include Humanity Club, I Care, Antibullying Through The Arts and One Common Humanity; 128 podcasts so far and hundreds of blogs as well as original essays, fables, videos, music and more.

We hope you will become part of the Humanity Project too. Join our campaign at no cost by signing our simple “Pledge For Humanity”: Sign the pledge. Help us to speak on behalf of humanity’s best, assist in the effort to continue our species’ advance toward “equality for each, respect for all.”

Small Things Aren't Always Small

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This is the second in a new series of blogs written for our website by Humanity Project Founder, Bob Knotts, a playwright, poet and author of the book “Beyond Me: Dissecting Ego To Find The Innate Love At Humanity’s Core.” These blogs offer a more personal perspective on the goodness and inherent value of humanity, ideas that are the foundation of the Humanity Project’s work.

So often each of us could make some meaningful difference in the life of another human being — but we don’t act. Over the years I’ve come to believe one of the main obstacles to well-intended action is this: We don’t feel our effort will really do anything to help that person.

I also have come to believe that we’re usually wrong about this.

Think of your own everyday experiences. Have you ever been tired or discouraged, only to have some stranger look at you with a sincere smile that lifted your spirits? I have, many times. Have you ever felt a change in your attitude toward the world when someone stops to let your car into heavy traffic or gestures you to go ahead of them in the supermarket checkout line or picks up something you dropped? Again, I’ve been buoyed by these small kindnesses often. Or have you ever had someone give you something small but unexpected that didn’t seem so small at the time?

Let me tell you about a moment like this when I was in my early 20s, living as a broke young writer in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to writing, I’m also a lifelong musician. I’ll include here a photo of me with my first drum set. As you see, I was barely old enough to walk.

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A very young (and very grainy) Bob Knotts, with first drum set

One impoverished Vermont day, I needed a new pair of drumsticks. Not an expensive item. Standing at the counter to pay at my local music store, I found to my great frustration that I was more than one dollar short of enough money for my sticks. A pretty woman standing behind me instantly offered to pay the difference.

I remember feeling an intense sense of gratitude and affection for this person as I looked at her. “No, that’s very kind of you, but there’s no need,” I said — or something like those words. But her reply came back quickly and gently: “No, it would be my pleasure.” My point here? I have never forgotten that woman, though I’m now nearly 67-years-old. Her generosity, her kindness, her sincere gesture to help a struggling musician, these things touched me more deeply than I knew at the time. I can only hope that somehow she’s reading this and also remembers that afternoon in Vermont.

More than 40 years later, I couldn’t tell you exactly what this stranger looked like. She will always be beautiful in my memory. I never knew her name … and it didn’t matter at all. But I have recalled many dozens of times this simple act of humanity. And her act in turn has inspired me to help others in similar ways whenever possible.

Small things aren’t always so small, are they? And sometimes a pair of new drumsticks is all that’s needed to restore our stronger faith in the goodness and inherent value of fellow human beings.

Jack's Car: A Story

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Jack from Key West … and his remarkable car

This is the first in a new series of blogs written for our website by Humanity Project Founder, Bob Knotts, a playwright, poet and author of the book “Beyond Me: Dissecting Ego To Find The Innate Love At Humanity’s Core.” These blogs offer a more personal perspective on the goodness and inherent value of humanity, ideas that are the foundation of the Humanity Project’s work.

I’d like to introduce you to Jack. I never did catch his last name. Really didn’t matter at the time we met – to him or to me.

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What did matter at the time, to him and to me, was Jack’s car. You see it in these photos I snapped earlier this month while on vacation in Key West. When I first spotted him, Jack was working intently to attach the latest additions to that extraordinary vehicle, only stopping once to scatter some food across the ground for a passel of local chickens.

As you know if you’ve ever visited in recent years, Key West is full of chickens roaming the streets and yards all around that small island. Mother hens, baby chicks as well as the many roosters that crow whenever they feel inspired, day or night. As you also likely recall if you’ve ever set foot in Key West, it’s a place full of … let’s call them local characters. Eccentric folks who are as much part of the funky laidback vibe as Mallory Square and Duval Street. The old-timers who never seem to wear more than a bathing suit and flipflops, bearded men typically standing around with a beer in one hand. The ample couples squeezed tight atop compact motor scooters that dart among the tourists. The would-be writers and artists and craftspeople who arrived temporarily in Key West long long ago but never could quite leave, most of them forced to survive on waiter tips or minimum retail wages.

So to me, Jack was just one more. Another Key West character demonstrating his independence from everyone around him – and making sure everyone noticed.

Then I decided to chat with Jack. “Quite the car you have,” I said. He replied in a thick Eastern European accent, “It’s my car … and my wife.” Or that’s what I thought he said anyway. But as we continued talking I finally understood what Jack really was struggling to express. I looked at him, puzzled now: “The car … it’s a tribute to your wife?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “She passed away 20 years ago.”

This most peculiar car and its most eccentric creator were much more than I’d imagined. From a distance I could easily dismiss his existence with a condescending smile, adding Jack to my mind’s catalogue of Key West oddities. But looking more closely I soon could recognize something deeper about both car and creator. This automobile was Jack’s Taj Mahal, a monument to his undying devotion to one long dead woman. And everything on that automobile had some meaning about her. The mermaids were beauty and love. The dolphins represented freedom. And above it all, the image of his wife forever riding on the rooftop over Jack’s head.

“We were very close,” Jack told me softly.

How quickly we judge others in our world, judge them without the slimmest strip of knowledge to justify our instant conclusions. In our certainty we laugh at them, ridicule them, avoid them. The truth of those strange characters we sometimes see in passing through our busy day is obvious, afterall. Except that it isn’t. After a conversation of less than 10 minutes, my concepts of both Jack and his car were transformed. And I was forced to learn all over again an old lesson I should have remembered by now: People are rarely what they appear on the surface – and everyone, everyone has an important story that’s all their own.