The Project that is transforming schools and communities worldwide
International Kindness Reset (IKR) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting kindness as a core social value. Its mission is to deliver impactful, kindness-based educational services and tailored resources that support children and vulnerable adults across various settings.
IKR envisions transforming organizations and communities by fostering empathy and compassion, creating a ripple effect that reshapes societal behavior. To achieve this, it provides customized curricula, professional development, and direct educational support to schools, universities, care facilities, families, and community organizations.
We discuss these themes with the founders of International Kindness Reset, exploring their vision of kindness as a transformative social value.
How does your project concretely integrate kindness education into traditional school curricula, and what observable changes does it produce in students?
Implementing Connect with Kindness curriculum creates a holistic ecosystem of kindness within a school and community. This happens because students are authentically engaged in activities that connect with them each other as well as people within their community as an extension of their learning. For example, for theme #6 which is all about honoring elders and ancestors, preschoolers in Savigliano, Italy decided that they should go to a senior center where they did arts and crafts as well as dancing with the elders. Toward the end of their visit they created a paper chain, one link for each child and elder with a word that described their feelings. These links were all read aloud and then stapled together to form a chain and then hung on the wall in the facility creating a very moving moment for everyone. The children will never forget the impact of their visit. They will remember going there and seeing the joy on the faces of these elders who are otherwise disenfranchised from society. After each Connect with Kindness lesson the teachers ask students reflection questions that spark critical thinking. This is where the real learning occurs because the children reinforce their learning and have intentional time to connect their kind actions with their happy feelings, helping them to take the perspective of others, which helps to build empathy.
What strategies are used to train teachers and school staff, and how is continuity ensured beyond the pilot phase of the project?
All participating school staff are provided with the curriculum, in their primary language. We encourage the teachers to read the introductory pages together and to have a discussion about it before they participate in the training. This helps to set the foundation for the two-hour training, which is also conducted in the teacher’s primary language. Once the training has taken place, teachers launch the lessons. Throughout the initial 6 months of implementation, we check in with the team leader monthly to learn how it is going and if there are any tweaks that need to be made to the process. The longevity of the curriculum is usually dependent upon there being enough time allocated by the school leader to do the activities, so this is something we discuss at length before beginning the process. Implementing Connect with Kindness curriculum is transformative to the entire school community. Many schools continue forward with more training to become fully certified as a Kindness School, where the focus becomes less about kindness activities in the classroom and more on establishing sustainable school-wide traditions and kindness-related activities. International Kindness Reset has a Kindness School Certification process which takes two years of successful curriculum implementation along with one year of Kindness School activities to attain. Schools can apply to be Initially Certified, Moderately Certified, of Fully Certified as a Kindness School. This process ensures continuity and continuous growth.
In what ways can your “Kindness Project” transform relational dynamics within schools and families?
The number one impact of implementing Connect with Kindness curriculum is that it improves student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationships. This is because students have a direct say in what the class will do as a response to a prompt. When student voice leads the charge, teachers take note and this helps them to better understand how their students think and feel about kindness. It helps them to see where students may lack confidence in expressing kindness so they can help to guide them. Most curriculum provides a “canned” script for teachers to follow that may or may not meet the needs of the students social, emotional, cultural, or academic needs. By having students determine the path of each lesson students are more engaged and invested in the learning. As for families, we have developed a resource that aligns with each of the six themes in the curriculum, called Connect with Kindness at Home. This is a workbook parents can purchase on Amazon.It (in Italian) and is designed to bring families closer together by conducting kindness-based activities together. Families report that communication and relational bonds improve as a result of conducting the 35 activities, which again are based on the thoughts and ideas of the children in the family. When schools adopt the curriculum and encourage families to use the activities in the workbook the results are absolutely incredible! Children begin to learn more about kindness, compassion, empathy, and care because these concepts are permeating their schools and their homes, simultaneously.
What role do statistical evidence and impact evaluations play in the development and expansion of kindness-based projects at an international level?
For each of our projects we ask for pre- and post-implementation survey responses from teachers and students. We monitor student growth in empathy, compassion, kindness, care, and relationships. We also monitor teacher perceptions as it relates to student growth and the teacher’s knowledge about their students and well as their experiences in using the curriculum. These data help us to adjust and expand our resources, and to improve our training and logistical processes as it relates to the implementation. In 2021 we piloted the first version of the curriculum with roughly 350 students, worldwide. Since then, we have redeveloped the curriculum four times and have expanded the age-ranges to: PreK-1st, 2nd-4th, 5th-8th, and 9th-12 grades. We estimate that there are currently over 3,500 students are using Connect with Kindness, worldwide. We are also using data scientifically gathered to be endorsed by the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Once we achieve their endorsement more schools in the US will become aware of Connect with Kindness curriculum.
Considering the organization’s global scope, how are projects adapted to the different cultural and social contexts of the countries involved?
What is magical about the Connect with Kindness school curriculum and Connect with Kindness at Home Family Guidebook is both resources automatically align with the values, cultures, and traditions of the children using them because their voices and ideas drive the activities. For example, a school in Africa and a school in Italy may ask their students this same simple question: “What is one simple thing we can do to entertain each other or someone else at the school?” The children in Africa might decide to perform a traditional dance for another class while the children in Italy might decide that they will perform a puppet show using their favorite nursery rhyme for each other. Families in the US and Lithuania using the Connect with Kindness Family Guidebook might respond to this simple question differently as well: What is one thing we can do to honor our ancestors? The family in Lithuania might go to the cemetery to clean their ancestors’ graves and to light candles in memory of them while the family in the US might create a family tree where all their ancestor’s names are written.
Emanuela Borgatta Dunnett
Manu Writes and Reviews 