#BeKind21 is back, and I encourage and invite you to click here to sign up and join us now. 

I want so badly to write you a note about how meaningful #BeKind21 is to me and my family. I want to invite you to join this movement that last year resulted in over 42,000,000 unique acts of kindness in the month of September and stretched across oceans, time zones, and sectors. Those intentions are absolutely at the heart of this email, but today, with my heart heavy and tears always brewing in the corner of my eyes, I want you to join me in recognizing the inextricable link between kindness and quieting fear, between kindness and the grief associated with unimaginable loss, between kindness and propelling action in service to others, between kindness and survival – for me, and for our world.

Many of you know the story of this campaign, born out of the worry that a mother (me!) had about her son starting school in a new environment and being met with kindness. This campaign was an opportunity to create and spread kindness in his new community, and I couldn’t have imagined how much #BeKind21 would mean to me, to our team at Born This Way Foundation, and to so many globally. Click here to join our movement of kindness and pledge to #BeKind21. 

Today I’m preparing my son to start second grade, and this year I know that he’ll spend it behind a screen, away from loved ones to protect them, wearing a mask as he rides his bike down our driveway, listening to his parents attend Zoom funerals in the other room and speak in quiet whispers about the incalculable loss taking place across our world, and joining physically distanced protests in our community to watch his neighbors declare that Black Lives Matter. I need kindness in a way that I’ve never felt before. Maybe you do, too. 

#BeKind21 has been uniquely designed to be responsive to today’s movements, for each of you, and to showcase that kindness is not an empty gesture; rather, kindness is a verb. To be kind is to prioritize your mental wellness and recognize that your feelings are valid. To be kind is to advocate for a world that values, validates, and respects all people. 

You can read more about the invitation to join #BeKind21 and sign up here, and if you’re like me and you find yourself overwhelmed, please remember that you are powerful. The world needs you, and whether you can give the world (and yourself) a kind act, or twenty-one, in September, the most important thing that you can do is to keep going. We need you. We need all of us. I believe, as I always have, that people are good and that more people together are better. For now, I’ll take y’all virtually, #KindlyMask’d and from six feet of physical distance away, and I can’t wait for what we’re able to do together. 

In Kindness,

Maya Smith
Executive Director