Dear Readers,

We’re so excited about this news we’re going to jump right to the spoilers: we’re expanding Channel Kindness to make it bigger, kinder, and open to everyone and we want YOU to join us.

Now that we got that out of our system, we’ll take a breath and give you the backstory.

As you probably know, we just wrapped up #BeKind21 on Friday and to say that we were blown away by the response and overwhelmed by the compassion and the action that came from it is an understatement.

Hundreds of thousands participated – as individuals, teams, schools, organizations, and even whole towns (shout out to Anaheim, CA!) – and collectively we practiced more than 8 million of acts of kindness. Our favorite thing each day was seeing the stories you shared of how you went out of your way for strangers, helped out friends and loved ones, and – just as importantly – took time to take care of yourself.

When we launched #BeKind21, we talked about how we wanted it to be an invitation to build habits of kindness that would last all year and beyond. So as we came to the end of the 21 days, we started thinking: How can we keep this going?

And that made us think about Channel Kindness.

Again, as we’re pretty sure everyone reading this knows, Channel Kindness is the incredible platform we started two years ago to shine a light on the kindness in our communities. It came out of noticing how few stories are written about (or by) young people, and how many of those are negative.

Further, we saw the hurt in the world, and to be honest, we were feeling pretty overwhelmed by it. We wanted to create a platform for young people to use their own voices to highlight the compassion, caring, and do gooding they see in the world. The stories of hope. The steps towards building a kinder and braver world that are already being made. And hundreds of stories later, the dozens of young people we are so proud to call Channel Kindness Reporters have done just that.

So as we started getting ready for year three of Channel Kindness, we knew it was time to make it even bigger.

To include more people – all around the country and, for the first time, all around the world. To make it not only a platform for sharing stories of kindness (though it will still be that!), but also an open, ongoing invitation to put kindness into action. To make it a true community of those who understand that just because we can’t fix all of the world’s problems doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fix the problems we have solutions for.

We could not be more excited for this next chapter of Channel Kindness and hope you will join us. Here’s how it will work:

1. Sign up to join Channel Kindness!
2. Throughout the year, we’ll come up with the CK Challenges – like #BeKind21 – and share them with you.
3. When you see a CK Challenge you want to take part in, pledge to join it and share about it on social media (and follow along to see what other people are doing!) with the hashtag #ChannelKindness.

So are you ready to join Channel Kindness? Sign up today to receive your first CK Challenge!

(Hint, it’s inspired by our friends at #WhenWeAllVote and is all about being kind to your community by embracing the power of voting.)

Kindly,

Cynthia Germanotta, Co-Founder and President + Maya Smith, Executive Director