Invitation to Schools and Youth Groups in the Arab Region

To Participate in

 A Special Project to Promote "Kindness"

Written and Illustrated by Children of the Arab Region

SUMMARY

We all know that kindness comes naturally to children. This project aims at capturing their spontaneity and innocence and reinforcing their natural tendency toward kindness.

In celebration of International Year of Volunteers + 10 and as part of The Arab Initiative to Foster a Culture of Volunteering, the Association for Volunteer Services and the Arab Thought Foundation would like to produce a book in Arabic with kindness stories and drawings by children (ages 5-12) from many different Arab countries, with the view that kindness is an important foundation and driving force for volunteering. We invite schools and youth groups from throughout the region to have their students write kindness stories and draw pictures of people doing acts of kindness. The exercise, itself, will encourage greater kindness. Schools and organizations can post these stories and drawings for others to see. And for those you would like to have considered for the book, we invite you to scan and submit these stories and drawings as soon as possible, but no later than October 31st. Please only submit those that fit the criteria of the project. The stories and drawings that are selected will be acknowledged by the first name of the contributor, age, and country, and a complete list of schools and youth contributors (first and last name) that are selected will be provided in the acknowledgements. If you are interested in participating, please follow the instructions carefully:

WHO CAN GET INVOLVED

Children (ages 5-12), teachers and schools, and adult leaders of youth groups and summer camps from throughout the Arab World.

RATIONALE

In our book Learning to CARE: Education, Volunteering, and Community Service (Chapter 5), we note that “an important way for a school to help students learn to care is to create a kind and caring school environment.” One of the exercises we suggest to help schools do that is to have children write “kindness stories” modeled on the stories in the book Kids’ Random Acts of Kindness (Conari Press, 1994).

PROCESS

The teacher or other adult leader should ask the students what the word “kindness” means and how people act in kind and caring ways. The teacher can help guide them to understand that such acts could include:

• People who notice someone having a problem and help them
• People who see that others are sad or depressed and cheer them up
• People who become aware that someone is lonely and go to talk with them, and
• People who see a person or animal that is sick or hurt and take care of them.

Hopefully the discussion will lead children to understand that kindness takes sensitivity to the needs of others, a willingness to put those needs first, the courage to act, and the self-confidence to believe that what one does can truly help another.

The teacher or adult leader should then ask the students to think of a recent situation, big or small, in which someone was kind to them, or they observed someone being kind to another person – and ask them to describe the situation briefly. The story should NOT be about them helping someone else. It is not an “I Story” where “I” did something kind. But it could be a “Me Story” where someone was kind to “me”. The student writing the story should have been the receiver or observer, and not the giver of kindness.

"ME" - NOT "I" STORIES
The focus in these instructions on “Me” rather than  “I”  stories is a significant departure from the original Random Acts of Kindness books, in which many of the stories were written by the givers of kindness. It is good to have students recognize and reflect on their own goodness and its impact on themselves and others. But such reflection should be done cautiously, since it is a self-centered approach, while caring should primarily be other-centered. In general, it is better for the school to nurture a spirit of appreciation for the spontaneous acts of kindness students observe in others. This will encourage the students to imitate and replicate such behavior without thought of recognition or appreciation.

INSTRUCTION FOR SUBMISSION

The story should be true so that the reader feels that this is a genuine expression of appreciation. It should be written in the student’s own words and in the student’s own handwriting on plain white paper that is A-5 (half of an A-4 paper). It can be in pen or pencil, and should be between 10 and 100 words. The teacher should not correct spelling or grammar, or have the student rewrite it to be “better”, but leave it as the student wrote it. (If the teacher feels the words or meaning are not clear, s/he can write the words out on a separate page and send it with the student’s submission.) Illustrating the story is optional and can be done on the same or a second page. Drawings need to illustrate such acts of kindness. They can be submitted alone or with a kindness story. The stories and drawings should be scanned at 300 dpi in color or black and white and sent as .jpg files. The school should include the abbreviated name of the school in the filename of the .jpg file and consecutively number each picture (modernsch1, modernsch2, etc) and send a separate Word or Excel document with a list of these .jpg files, which includes the full name of the youth, his/her age, and grade in school (or grade the student will enter in the fall).
 

Stories/Drawings (Sample file)

General Information Form

Please also include in the file, preferably on a different worksheet or page:

Submit the stories and drawings to initiative@avs.org.lb as soon as possible and no later than October 30, 2011.
Submission of a story or drawing will indicate permission for the story or drawing to be published in a book or on a website to promote volunteering in the Arab world, without any financial compensation to the school, the student, or anyone else involved.

If you have any questions, please let us know. We look forward to your submissions.