We are less than one month into 2024, as this blog is written. But the Humanity Project already has earned a 2024 Candid Gold Seal of Transparency from GuideStar, the highly respected national nonprofit information service. This means the Humanity Project is open about our practices and our finances. It means our organization operates with integrity. And it means you can have confidence when donating to our work to “inspire greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity”… our mission. The Humanity Project is now in our 19th year, founded in 2005. During this entire period we’ve taken pride in maintaining high ethical standards. We use the money from our wonderful sponsors and individual donors in ways that further our mission. That’s one reason we get funding from important organizations such as State Farm and The Our Fund Foundation, among others. A big thank you, then, to GuideStar for this 2024 demonstration of support for the Humanity Project. We will do our best to justify their opinion of our nonprofit and the vital work we do. “Equality for each, respect for all.”
Welcome 2024
Yes… A hearty welcome indeed to 2024. (Can it really be we’re nearly a quarter century into this millennium?) The Humanity Project enters our new year hopeful. And excited on many fronts.
You’ll be hearing in the coming months about some of our latest efforts, which include bold new additions to our State Farm-sponsored I Care program. We’ll unveil those changes early in 2024. Then there’s our planned Humanity Park. We’ve been working on this project for several months in partnership with our good friends at the Hollywood LGBTQ Council. Since it’s not a done deal quite yet, we’ll save most of the details for later. But we now have very strong support from key officials and neighbors in Hollywood, Florida … and we expect to receive final approvals for our renamed city park within a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted. For now, just know that we plan to transform a large city park into something very special for all residents and visitors alike — a welcoming, warm, safe refuge from our troubled world for everyone who enters Humanity Park.
Our Humanity Club and Antibullying Through The Arts programs have expanded in the 2023-24 school year with vital support from the Our Fund Foundation and Floatarama, among others. Those programs resume as soon as the kids return to classes. And we’ll be out and about in the community more in 2024 as well, with speaking engagements, event appearances and other outreach efforts. These are only some of the reasons we’re hopeful and excited as 2024 begins. Please join our work to promote “equality for each, respect for all” by signing our Pledge for Humanity on this website. May this new year bring all of us more peace, more health, more compassion and more hope.
Seasoned With Giving
At a Humanity Project holiday party, some joyful singing
The tradition dates back centuries. During the holidays, well … Perhaps Charles Dickens said it best in his great story, “A Christmas Carol”: "At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, Sir."
Today, of course, the needs are often broader and more complex than in 19th Century London. Our society’s needs include a healthier planet, safer children, equality for every person. And much much more. At the Humanity Project, we promote “equality for each, respect for all.” At the heart of our mission is the need for greater self-worth, which in turn allows individuals to treat other folks with more humanity. As we tell our Humanity Project kids: “It’s only those people who feel bad about themselves that make others feel bad. When you feel like somebody, you treat everyone else like somebody too.” Respect for all begins with respect for self.
If you reflect on your experience, you’ll see that’s true. So our organization is tackling a fundamental social problem through practical programs that work. We strive to be effective, inspiring … and transparent. The respected national nonprofit rating service, Candid/Guidestar, consistently awards the Humanity Project its Gold Seal of Transparency, showing that we are open about our practices and careful with our funds.
We hope in this Season of Giving 2023, you will consider a donation in some form to the Humanity Project. Whether $5 or $500, it helps us do our important work both with children and adults. You can even make a monthly donation through our Sponsor A Child feature. It’s safe, simple and allows you to donate, say, $10 a month to sponsor a better future for one child.
We love the holidays here at the Humanity Project. It is a time when folks come together with affection and generosity. In that spirit, we wish you and yours a very joyful and healthy holiday season! We hope 2024 will bring our world a step or two closer to “equality for each, respect for all.”
Our Fund And FLoatarama, Thanks!
Today the Humanity Project is proud to thank two important sponsors: The Our Fund Foundation, one of our longtime major supporters … and FLoatarama, a new nonprofit that just awarded us meaningful funding. Both agencies work to improve life for the South Florida LGBTQ community. And now both of them are helping the Humanity Project to prevent the school bullying that disproportionately harms LGBTQ students. We thank them.
FLoatarama recently gave out their second round of annual grants to six nonprofits in South Florida, including the Humanity Project. Each of those agencies is respected for important programs that directly benefit LGBTQ young people, whether through education or the arts or in other ways. The funding is administered with help from Our Fund. We are grateful to FLoatarama CEO Scott Schramm and his team. And as you can see, some of our Humanity Project kids wanted to thank this new sponsor in their own fashion:
Of course, the Humanity Project has many times and in many ways thanked The Our Fund Foundation … something we make sure to do throughout the year. Their funding is vital to our work with students, promoting respect for all, self-worth and equality. We truly can’t do what we do without this extraordinary agency, led by CEO David Jobin. We’re always happy to say with pride, “This program was made possible by a grant from The Our Fund Foundation, an LGBTQ Community Foundation.”
And now we’re very pleased to add, “This program was made possible by a grant from The FLoatarama LGBTQ Youth Fund at Our Fund Foundation, an LGBTQ Community Foundation.” A very big thanks to both Our Fund and FLoatarama. With your help, the Humanity Project continues to work hard every day promoting “Equality For Each, Respect For All.”
An Educator Comments On Our Work
Our remarks here will be brief — because the letter in this post says it all. Kind but meaningful comments from a respected educator. Dr. Lisa Sporillo is very familiar with the work of the Humanity Project. And she has found that we have made a real difference in her school. Our efforts at Pembroke Pines Charter Elementary are just part of fulfilling our mission to instill greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity. Thank you, Dr. Sporillo, for the chance to spread our positive message among your students.
Lean But Effective
Our Thousand Youth March for Humanity — the nation’s first mass children’s march against bullying
As the Humanity Project nears our 18th birthday, we’d like to share a fact you may not know: Since our founding in 2005, we have never paid anyone a salary. We think that’s quite a record for an organization that has accomplished all that we have.
We have created from scratch several acclaimed programs, including I Care, Antibullying Through The Arts and Humanity Club. And we’ve offered them for free, reaching tens of thousands of children and adults. We organized and led the nation’s first mass children’s march against bullying, our Thousand Youth March for Humanity. The Humanity Project has made many dozens of our own original videos for kids and grownups as well as original music, stories, blogs and podcasts. We currently have two websites, our main site at thehumanityproject.com along with our site for parents of teen drivers at thp4parents.com … We’ve a social media following in excess of 10,000 people and our main website attracts visitors worldwide every day of the year, folks who want to learn our inspiring message. Hundreds of those visitors have signed our Pledge For Humanity, promising to treat others and themselves with respect in their daily lives. We could go on … and on. But we hope the point is clear: The Humanity Project has made a difference.
We couldn’t have done this without our great sponsors, including State Farm, The Our Fund Foundation, Children’s Services Council of Broward County, Google and others. They help us pay the essential bills. But those bills do not include paychecks. Our founder and president, our board members, our volunteers, our teachers and guidance counselors and students — everyone works without a salary. Small stipends to defray expenses are sometimes given, but they are very small indeed. Typically, $500 or less. And they are awarded carefully, very few and far between.
This history is part of the reason the Humanity Project consistently earns the Candid Gold Seal of Transparency from GuideStar, the respected national organization that oversees nonprofit integrity. We are very proud of that history. And we hope to continue doing what we do for many years to come, instilling greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity. “Equality For Each, Respect For All.” That’s the Humanity Project.
Beyond Human Color
This is another in a 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 ideas that lay at the foundation of the Humanity Project’s work.
“America, of all the Western nations, has been best placed to prove the uselessness and the obsolescence of the concept of color.”
James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time”
———————————————-
What does color mean?
Like everything engaged by the human mind, color acquires significance through our experience with it. And our experience with color begins at our earliest ages. Think about common perceptions of colors picked up by children. Even infants soon learn about sunny optimistic yellow, or dynamic and daring red. Or earthy ordinary brown. They also understand colors through a vast array of personal experiences. The approach of black forbidding storm clouds, followed by the relief of puffy welcoming white cloudshapes. Children focus their imaginations on those white clouds, this one shaped like a camel, that like a clown. Black storm clouds are never seen as suitable for youthful daydreams.
The meaning of colors also comes through stories. Cliches, of course, from cowboys in their white and black hats to shining knights on white steeds and cartoon villains with black capes and curly black moustaches. To every kid, to everyone throughout our lives, those colors mean something real. They’ve gained powerful and unshakable connotations of which we’re almost entirely unaware. Whether we know it or consciously agree, things in this world that are colored white carry positive meanings for most of us. And things colored black? Not as much. Too often our mental associations with black, and even brown, are unpleasant, frightening or hostile. Yellow and red are somewhat more complicated. Naturally, there are exceptions: Many of us believe black clothing, for instance, appears more flattering than white attire. But these exceptions prove the rule. Black clothes also are more provocative, sexier. They have become cool precisely because of their otherwise negative connotations.
Enter humanity.
The white man and black man and brown man, the yellow woman and red woman. How nice that more enlightened folks often portray our species as a pretty palette of colors, a happy rainbow of equality. Except that we’re not. As a society, we don’t view the white man and black man and brown man as equals, the yellow and red women. Far from it. We remain a divided humanity, in no small part thanks to our insistence on labeling each other by color.
And this is my point.
We need to understand the problems inherent with color-coded references to other human beings. There is no getting away from the meaning of black storm clouds and white unthreatening cloudshapes. But there is an escape from attaching such meanings to our neighbors, friends and family.
I am, by common standards, a white man. Why should anyone associate positive feelings with me more than with my Black colleagues? They shouldn’t. But they do, unavoidably.
So I’m suggesting that we explore alternatives. We do need basic descriptions of one another: If I’m sending a handyman to work on your kitchen, you’ll want to know who to expect at your door. Skin tone and so-called “racial characteristics” are important parts of our appearance. But we can describe people without the distorted connotations of color.
How might we accomplish that? Allow me to outline one simple idea offered with all humility – and in full recognition of my own social categorization by whiteness. I understand these are highly sensitive topics for many, especially many people of color, as this group is typically described today. Yet as a writer of whatever hue, I believe my job includes both pinpointing problems and proposing solutions. With this notion in mind, I make the following suggestion.
Perhaps we should use references to our regional origins, much as we do now when avoiding skin-color descriptions. But instead of the awkward “African American” and “Asian American,” “Latin American” and “Native American” we might simply refer to the Black person as “African.” We can eliminate the loaded word “Black” while providing key information about that individual. For the white woman or man, we might be identified as “European.” “Latin” and “Asian” and “Native” may suffice for the conventional brown, yellow and red peoples. That’s all the racial description that seems necessary. In the everyday world, we only require broad information about a person’s looks. You’ll recognize the recommended handyman without color coding. (If our handyman is a white person from South Africa, “European” offers the necessary physical specifics. Nationality is something else. Any confusion about regional identification is easily resolved, as we already do with “Asian.” Are we referring only to physical characteristics or to region of birth? We simply clarify with a few words: “She’s Asian, born in Peru.” The identifiers I suggest could become associated primarily with a person’s appearance.)
Humanity should eliminate color from our descriptions of individuals. It’s not necessary. And it’s demonstrably inaccurate: My skin is nothing like white. Nor is my Asian girlfriend remotely yellow nor are my African American friends actually black. Ask a talented artist. She’ll explain that skin tones require a careful mix of colors. That’s the colorful truth of our humanity – every one of us is a vibrant blend.
The simple description “African” may offer a clear concise replacement for “Black” when referring to people. Along with those other regional descriptions, African at least carries more sensible meaning than attaching color to our humanity. Colors convey relatively simplistic meanings in our minds. Human beings should not suffer from those misleading concepts.
Back To School
It’s nearly that time. Another school year is just ahead, hard as that may be to believe. The summer has raced by, it seems. But as the 2023-24 term begins, we want to ask for your help: Please spread the word about the Humanity Project to any school counselors, administrators or teachers you may know. Our programs are free, proven effective … and fun for the students.
On our own, we can’t connect with all the schools that need our help to prevent bullying and instill stronger feelings in students about values such as respect, equality and self-worth. Broward County alone is home to the nation’s sixth largest school district — and we don’t have the resources to call or visit every school. So we’re looking for your assistance, please.
Here’s how you can make sure more kids get our Humanity Project positive message:
Call, email or visit your local elementary school.
(We have programs for older students too but need help with elementary schools only.)
Give the elementary school this information:
Email: info@thehumanityproject.com
Phone: 954-205-2722
Contact: Bob Knotts, President & Founder
Website: www.thehumanityproject.com
That’s it. Just copy and paste those four bullet points and share them however you can. After they contact us, we’ll do the rest.
And if you’d like to volunteer for the Humanity Project this school year, please let us know. We’d love to talk with you. Thank you so much! With your help, we will reach more students than ever this year with our core message: “Equality For Each, Respect For All.” It’s needed now more than ever.
The Humanity Project
Success Stories
The Humanity Project has many many many success stories. We’re talking here about the progress of individuals helped by our programs, especially young people. Kids who start to believe in themselves. Teens who become leaders. Children of all ages who understand empathy and respect in meaningful ways. We’ve also helped parents learn to be better role models. And adults around the world to feel inspired by the deeper value of humanity.
Let us briefly tell you just a few of these stories — changing the names to protect the privacy of our kids.
Nelson was an insecure and immature fifth grade student when he joined our Humanity Club program. His mother explained he was unsure of his identity, perhaps his sexual orientation. We worked with Nelson week after week for an entire school year as part of our program. Little by little, we watched him emerge from his shy protective shell … and to assume leadership roles in our club. By the end of the school year Nelson said this: “I gained a lot of confidence from the Humanity Project. It helped me very much, that’s for sure.” It was obvious to everyone: After his time with the Humanity Project, Nelson was a changed child.
Another elementary school student, Tilda, avoided public speaking when she joined our program. She had a slight lisp and seemed very self-conscious. Within a few months, though, Tilda gladly took part in videos that required her to recite lines … and even led activities in front of the group. By the end of our Humanity Club, Tilda decided to write a letter to us: “Thank you for teaching me this year. You helped me gain confidence and knowledge. Thanks for all the attention you’ve given me. It made a large difference in my attitude. I’ve changed in so many ways. No other teacher has ever invested so much time in me, and I am truly grateful!"
Then there was Marion, a talented high school student. She quickly assumed a leadership role in our I Care program, arranging events and speaking to peers. And leading her own I Care team after school. Marion told us that I Care gave her an opportunity to learn, grow and develop more quickly and more fully than would have been possible without the Humanity Project. She matured as she acquired an understanding of both the issues addressed by I Care and the underlying human dynamics involved in leading other human beings. Marion went on to a college career of honors and achievement, in no small part due to her experience with the Humanity Project.
These are just some samples of the impact our nonprofit has had on individuals during the past 18 years. You can watch a short video that shows kids talking for themselves about our Humanity Club program. Perhaps we’ve also had some influence on your feelings about yourself and others. Maybe you’ve even signed our Pledge For Humanity. We know that our efforts inspire greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity. Equality, respect and self-worth are our core values. Join our campaign, won’t you? “Equality For Each, Respect For All” are values that allow us to feel better about everyone, including ourselves. That’s the ultimate goal of the Humanity Project.
Young Leaders Leading Peers
This is how we do it at the Humanity Project. Kids teaching kids … Our handpicked young student leaders have spent a year learning about the real value of self-worth, respect for others, equality — and also how to present those values to their peers in various ways throughout their membership in our Humanity Club program. Last week was another opportunity for our leaders to share their knowledge. And to inspire their younger peers.
This time our 5th graders worked with a large group of 2nd graders to help the smaller children gain some understanding of ideas such as respect and community. They began the session with our regular Humanity Club deep breathing and affirmations, explaining why these practices are helpful.
It’s just one part of the Humanity Project’s efforts to promote “Equality For Each, Respect For All.” We have learned that by working with elementary school kids in this way, we help prevent bullying and other destructive behavior in their school of course, but also in middle school and high school. The lessons stick and carry over to inform their values later in life.
We’re proud of all the kids in our Humanity Club program. They are constantly challenged with new ideas and difficult problems to consider, but they come back to us for more, week after week. We applaud them. And we thank them for their hard work. Bravo to each of these young leaders.
State Farm Saves Lives
The Humanity Project's acclaimed "I Care" program has helped teen drivers, and parents of teen drivers, avoid car crashes for more than a decade. Now a major new State Farm grant will allow teens working under Humanity Project guidance to create a new up-to-date book on safe driving... and to offer the book free online to anyone who is interested in its important lessons. The hard copy book also will be available to schools, courts, State Farm agents and others who request it. Evidence proves parents greatly influence the driving of their teenage motorists ...if those adults understand how to help. Teens also can improve the driving habits of their peers, research shows. "I Care!" seizes on this evidence in order to enlist both teens and parents in the battle against distracted driving. The program is funded by a generous grant from State Farm, which helped create the Humanity Project "I Care" driver safety program in 2012 -- and has funded this program each year since. These collaborations include an innovative free website for parents of teen drivers: www.thp4parents.com ("The Humanity Project 4 Parents").
The “I Care” program falls under the Humanity Project mission of “instilling greater respect for the goodness and inherent value of humanity” and our trademarked motto, “Equality For Each, Respect For All” in this way: We teach the importance of respect on the roads. Where else in daily life is mutual respect more immediately important than on our dangerous highways, where distracted drivers cause so many crashes and near-crashes? A recognition of the value of our own lives and the lives of others helps us make safety-conscious decisions when motoring. We thank State Farm once again, our loyal partners in this and other programs since 2008. And we hope you will help us to thank them by visiting their website and looking over the many excellent services they offer. State Farm, we can’t do it without you.
Our Kids Teaching Kids
One major goal of the Humanity Project’s acclaimed Humanity Club program is this: to teach young student leaders how to help their peers understand the value of respect, equality and self-worth. Kids teaching kids.
We now have a new tool to spread their positive message — two new short videos that can be shown in any school anywhere on planet earth, for free. These videos offer key lessons repeated at the beginning of every Humanity Club meeting. One involves a brief deep breathing exercise to relax our students and focus their attention. The other is an affirmation in call-and-response form that reminds our kids of their importance as human beings. Our Humanity Project instructors always repeat the purpose of the deep breathing and the benefits of self-worth … benefits both for themselves and others around them. The concepts and the practical techniques are taught and taught again to stick in young minds. And they do stick.
Over the years we have found these parts of our Humanity Club sessions are not only enjoyed by all our kids. The lessons indeed are remembered and used independent of our program, whether at home, in school or around their towns. We’ve heard stories of children successfully drawing on their lessons when they can’t sleep or during stressful moments. Simple as the teachings are, we find they are wonderfully helpful in connecting with elementary and middle school students in ways that improve their lives.
As a result, we decided to ask some of our Humanity Club members to help us put together shorter, simplified versions of these two program elements, creating two videos they can share with their classmates as well as with students in any school that has access to the internet. The first video walks kids through deep breathing. And in the second video, kids repeat encouraging phrases such as, “I am somebody!”
Please share these links with any parents, educators or kids who may find them helpful. You may be surprised just how helpful they really can be.
