One Million Acts Of Kindness Week begins 3 weeks from today and I am busier than I have ever been. I have a new-found respect for anyone who sits in front of a computer every day. Sitting 8 to 10 hours a day, copying and pasting is the most monotonous, albeit, most important work I can do leading up to this week.
Education professionals are my primary target group in the homestretch to this week-long event. They are the individuals who make the day-to-day decisions which affect students lives. PTAs, Principals, Guidance counselors and Education boards across the country are being contacted. The response has been strong. I feel like a bottled water salesman in the desert. There is a thirst for a kindness movement like One Million Acts Of Kindness for students across the country.
I am contacting all of these groups at the state level, with the hopes that the information gets sent to all the schools in the state. The opportunity to have as many children in this country embrace having a goal of One Million Acts Of Kindness is the reward for the due diligence.
If you are one of the Education Professionals who has been contacted through my email/phone campaign, please think of every student in your state having an individual goal of performing One Million Acts Of Kindness in his or her life. Bullying won’t stand a chance.

Social media can be a great way to promote any idea you may have, especially being on a budget of somewhere near $0.00.  Bogart’s soon to be released first book, in a fun children’s book series, will be promoted by video on YouTube and on Bogart’s own Facebook page.
Bogart’s first book is nearly complete. It is written by Bob Votruba and Tim Killeen, but more importantly to me, it is illustrated in such a way which captures Bogart’s spirit, almost magically, by David Sullivan, a very gifted artist.
We are having a blast collaborating on this project, while trying to create just the right feel for children to learn lessons, while having fun reading or being read these wonderful stories.
The basic outlines for 4 more books are being worked on with the hopes of another book in the series being released in the fall of 2011.
Stay tuned and look for the notice of Bogart’s Youtube videos and Facebook page announced on this website in February.

Being a grassroots effort, I am always looking for ways to network with the most efficiency possible, reaching as many people as I can during the course of the day, but still conveying my message in a personal way. The individual goal of One Million Acts Of Kindness  is starting to reach children one classroom at a time, and at times, one school at a time. If one teacher’s interest in One Million Acts Of Kindness can spread to a classroom of twenty or so students, and one parent, principal or guidance counselor can reach hundreds of student at a time, just think of what a statewide group or agency’s impact could be, with having one million acts of kindness be a lifetime goal for each student in the state or commonwealth.
With just a little over three weeks until the start of One Million Acts Of Kindness Week, and using this time for promotion, the most efficient means of communication is contacting statewide groups and agencies directly by email and phone. To me, the state PTA and board of education groups could be a powerful force in reaching students in classrooms. Parents having a direct impact on children statewide on an individual basis…Bullying be gone!

Traveling the country in my 1990 Kindness Bus, I am able to see firsthand, the greater good that kids as young as 4 years of age are accomplishing. Kids that believe in helping others, are learning important lessons while doing so, one of the most important lessons: they learn to believe in themselves.
“Believe to Achieve” was the name of the play I saw two nights ago, its lesson was, how believing in oneself can lead to an individual rising to the best of their ability. Doing and even hearing enough times in one’s life, that you have the power to make a difference in the world, can cause you to believe in yourself.
I love referring to the students I speak with as being part of a something big, part of a growing movement called “The Kindness Generation.” I believe kids need to hear this all the time to remind them that they are part of something very important. Hearing something enough gives one the belief in what they are told; kids need to believe that they are part of “The Kindness Generation.”

This is the most important time of year for One Million Acts Of Kindness. We are in the home stretch of a calling and emailing campaign to get as many groups to sign up for One Million Acts Of Kindness Week. The goal of two thousand groups participating this year is sure to be met. The global reach to other countries is beyond anything I had ever expected. I now have commitments from people in nearly twenty countries. I am ecstatic to say the least.
Today, I decided to concentrate on the Department of Education, nationally and state by state. I also started calling and emailing state PTAs. The response accelerated when I decided to call before emailing. As has been the case for the past 2 years, talking with parents, educators, counselors, administrators, principals and the students, the response today was identical when I talked with these dedicated individuals; there is such a thirst for a return to values in this country. Kindness is at the center of these values. I believe with my heart that a lifetime goal of kindness for each child will get us back on the road to moral value recovery. I believe in this enough to travel on a eighty-four sq ft bus with a dog for ten years.
I decided to reach for the stars this morning so I placed a call to the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, I didn’t reach the Secretary but caught a sympathetic ear when I told his assistant about how a lifetime goal of kindness will have a huge impact on bullying and cyber-bullying in our nation’s schools. The word of this movement is starting to spread in some very powerful ways.

Twenty-one actors from YouthAbility starred in the play “Believe to Achieve,” an inspirational production created by the teenagers themselves. All of the props, costumes and research for the play were also designed by them. The donations raised by this production are being used to help children made homeless by the wildfires in Israel. Kids helping kids, I love it!
Heidi Solomon from the Jewish Family Services Association has been working with these special needs children, all the time inspiring them that all of us need to “believe to achieve.” I was so impressed by the passion these teens had for the parts they played; it meant everything to them.
Prior to the play, I talked for a short fifteen minutes, to tell the audience and actors of my mission. Thank you to everyone for providing me the opportunity to be a part of this perfect evening.

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
1963 was a time in our nation’s history when there was much unrest in many of our cities, particularly the south. Many peaceful protests for freedoms started to become more physical. Some protests turned to riots. Our nation could have gone down a very frightening path. One seventeen minute speech changed all of that.
My favorite passage from the “I have a Dream” speech are the 19 words printed above. These beautiful words call for peace to a nation that could have taken that wrong path. These words are still very important today, not only for our nation but for the entire world as well.
In most of my in-classroom programs, I talk about what I like to call the “peaceful solutions” that Dr. King wanted for all people in our country to embrace. A new generation of children who need to know the importance of how differences can be settled by embracing peace in their own lives.
It has been nearly fifty years since these words have been spoken so eloquently. The short speech defused the “discontent” of the “sweltering summer” of 1963 in our country. These 19 words can also be used to defuse a disagreement between two individuals a well as creating “peaceful solutions” for nations around the world.

Today’s blog entry has been reentered from December in honor of Martin Luther King Day.