Humanity ... In the News

POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS

As I write this, I’m just back from sitting beside the ocean. Watching the lovely waves wash over the beach, I noticed a mother and her two young kids walking toward the water. One of the children was a toddler, probably not much more than one, and she plodded unsteadily over the pavement toward the beachfront. When this youngest child stepped on the sand, though, she became frightened and soon reached for her mother’s arms. Something about this unfamiliar experience was unsettling to the girl — the world beneath her feet was no longer quite so solid and predictable.

I mention this because it seemed to me a very human experience, that sense at any age of feeling suddenly off-balance in our lives. The Humanity Project has a brand new website for older kids, those coping with an age when they’re particularly prone to feeling unsteady. Emotionally unsteady, uncertain about who and what they are.

The site is called thp4kids and the first news story about the completed project appeared in the media last week. I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to see what the press is saying about this truly innovative site for students of about 12-years-old up to perhaps 17-years-old. Here’s the link: Read the news article about the Humanity Project’s thp4kids website.

As you’ll read, it’s a very special site, unique on the Internet to our knowledge. It was created by talented high school kids who have plenty of experience to offer their younger peers. After you finish the news story, you may well want to check out the website for yourself: Go to the thp4kids website. Please pass along that link to any parents or kids who may benefit from knowing about our site. Everyone feels unsteady on their feet sometimes in a society that seems constantly shifting and changing. For pre-teens and early teens who are handling these issues, we created thp4kids … “The Humanity Project 4 Kids!” We believe it can help many thousands of young people to gain a much more secure footing as they step toward their future.

Summertime Safety

POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS

Mid-July seems a good time for an important reminder: Teens drive more in the summer … and are in greater danger of accidents, injuries and deaths. If you’re an adult reading this, just think back on your own teenage summers. Perhaps, like me, you experienced some wild moments in an automobile during your high school years. Actually, I was in a terrible crash at 16 that could have killed me and others — but luckily, we all were wearing seat belts.

So a couple of things for you and the teens in your life. First, of course, be sure they discover and share our innovative I Care website and book. It’s all free — we’re not selling anything here except safety. They can find it at this link: I Care teen driver safety program website. This State Farm-sponsored program was created by the Humanity Project with high school students as the writers, illustrators and web designers.

Since I’ve mentioned State Farm, let me also tell you that this public-spirited company sponsors a big annual event called Celebrate My Drive, which awards 100 schools as much as $100,000 to help encourage safe driving by teens. Find out about this year’s event here: State Farm’s Celebrate My Drive.

And finally, I wanted to share a memorable short video that’s going viral on the Internet. It’s about a loving family and the importance of wearing seat belts to keep them together. The message is both touching and powerful: Watch the YouTube seat belt video. I’m hoping all of us remember to wear our seat belts and avoid distractions this summer as well as during every season of the year. But the reality is that teens are more likely to die in car accidents than adults and so need this advice urgently right now. Please do what you can to make sure the teens in your life get this message, very loud and clear.

Imagine if We Were Number 1

Dr. Laura Finley, Humanity Project Board of Directors VP

(Editor’s Note: This blog was written by Dr. Laura Finley, Vice President of the Humanity Project Board of Directors. Dr. Finley is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Barry University.)

No, not number one in military spending (which we are). Not number one in incarceration rates (which we are as well). What if, instead of these things, the U.S. became hyper-focused on becoming the most peaceful nation on earth? The recently released 2013 Global Peace Index (GPI) placed the U.S.100th out of 162 countries. That’s not so spectacular. The GPI, which is endorsed by a number of Nobel Peace laureates, eminent individuals and renowned academics, considers factors related to both negative peace, that is, the absence of violent conflict, and positive peace, or characteristics of just and humane societies, like ample housing, access to education and gender equality.  

The GPI’s Positive Peace Index measures attitudes, institutions and structures that either promote or prohibit a peaceful environment. The 2013 GPI noted that since 2008 110 countries have become less peaceful. The U.S is one of these. The U.S scores particularly poorly in regards to its high prison and jail population, its large and active military, the number of conflicts it is engaged in overseas and the number of combat deaths, its heavy weapons capacity and ease of access to small arms. The U.S. rates moderately on measures related to gender equality, education, and infant mortality. This failure to commit to peace is a global catastrophe, and a costly one at that.

The GPI report, available at www.visionofhumanity.org, calculates the total economic impact of containing violence to have been $9.46 trillion in 2012.  According to the report, cutting the cost of violence in half would be enough to repay all the debts of the developing world, provide for European financial stability and fully fund the Millennium Development Goals. So, what does it take to get to the top, to be a “peace” country?

The top ten of the GPI is dominated by small Nordic countries, although New Zealand, Canada and Japan are included as well. Despite being far different geographically and in its population, the U.S can perhaps draw a thing or two from these countries. Despite difficult economic times, Iceland is number one for its low crime rates, its minimal military and its resistance to getting involved in global violent conflict. In general, the high peace countries tend to have, among other qualities, more equitable distribution of resources, greater trust between citizens and more social cohesion. They invest in health and education and seek alternatives to retributive justice.  In essence, nations that score high on positive peace tend also to be high on the overall GPI. All is not lost, however. What the GPI does not do is gauge the number and quality of programs to engage and inspire youth to create a better world. And here, I know from personal experience, there is much to be celebrated. The work of great organizations like the Humanity Project is helping make positive peace by empowering young people to treat each other well, to take action to end bullying and to be leaders for social justice. Alas, while there is much to be done at a larger level, here in South Florida we are headed in the right direction.

I Care ... Growing Again

May 2013 check presentation to the Humanity Project by State Farm

(Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from the June 2013 Humanity Project email newsletter, Humanity News. You can sign up to receive the free newsletter once each month by clicking on the “Go” button in the right-hand column of this home page under “Sign up for our Email Newsletter.” We ask only for your email address.)

Our I Care/Just Let Me Drive program is expanding its reach, coming a step closer to our goal of taking this truly special teen driver safety program to the millions of kids it can help. The May $10,000 check presentation by State Farm to the Humanity Project will allow us to print copies of the I Care book for students all over South Florida: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Florida SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) plans to help us distribute these witty books, which are the core of the teen-to-teen program. We want to make sure the I Care books get into the hands of teens who will read them, and then share them with their best friends. Once again, thanks State Farm … We look forward to showing you more of the ways this program can help save many, many young lives!

An Education Toward Authenticity

Gabriela Pinto

(Editor’s Note: This blog was written for the Humanity Project by Gabriela Pinto, Vice President of the Humanity Project Board of Directors. Ms. Pinto is the creator of the website http://www.heal-anxiety-and-depression.com.)

As a society we have agreed on general beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. What it means to be successful and what it means to not make the grade. But it is a limited perspective on life. We are all individuals, not molds. As a result, often times we carry on an internal struggle. We impose an image on ourselves of what we think we should be or what others expect us to be rather than what we really are. Instead of befriending and trusting the individual we truly are inside, we sometimes try to deny it or even annihilate it. For instance, if your heart tells you to pursue a career in acting or painting instead of a 9 to 5 office job, what is really keeping you from doing it? The only thing that moves us to be something we are not is fear. Fear of criticism, fear of lack of approval, fear of failure.

It is here where you should ask yourself: Should I trust a made-up version of myself or the real version? Which one would better guide me through life? Which one can I rely on? Being authentic and true is not only a gift to us but a gift to humanity. Discovering our true talents, embracing our limitations and trusting the individual we have inside is what will really fulfill us. Our uniqueness makes for us a unique path to walk. And walking that unique path will teach us unique lessons that will benefit us all. By revealing who we truly are inside we enrich humanity as a whole. An education towards authenticity should be mandatory. It should be the purpose in all stages of life.

The Humanity Project 4 Kids!!

POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS

Yes, we have a whole new website created by kids … for kids! From the Humanity Project. It is a website intended specifically to serve a largely ignored population of special children: socially isolated middle school kids, including many LGBT students. The site is called thp4kids (“The Humanity Project 4 Kids”) and you’ll find it at this link: http://thp4kids.com It has been under development by talented students at a Florida magnet school for two years, with intensive work during the 2012-2013 school year thanks to a generous grant from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board. Our staffers at South Plantation High School created a complicated custom-designed site using the latest Flash technology — and this means the website is best viewed using the Internet Explorer 10 browser. (We plan to work over the summer on cross-browser compatibility issues, which bedevil even professional adult web developers these days. For now, the site is functional in other browsers but at its fastest and best in IE10 with a good Internet connection on a PC. ) We are very excited about this new major addition to the Humanity Project’s programs — and we hope a national, even international, audience of school kids will find the site and benefit from it. Because thp4kids isn’t for every child, as you’ll see. It’s for kids who are smart and lonely, perhaps struggling with sexual identity issues.

Thp4kids home page!

Kids who want to know and understand but feel confused at this point in their lives. We believe our new Internet destination can offer them an online friend as well as guidance, insight and encouragement. Check it out for yourself and you’ll see. For instance, look in the “You’re NOT Alone” section and watch the amazing “Hearing Voices (Inside Your Head)” animated features, one of them created just for boys and another just for girls. And listen to the ultra-cool song, “All Alone, But Not.” Or in the “Being … YOU” section, look at such videos as “Life Can Be Tough” or “How It Is: Life!” These and all other materials are original, made by the Humanity Project and our student staff. That includes the music, videos, writings, everything. It’s fairly impressive, if we say so ourselves. There’s even a “ChillSounds” relaxation feature that offers more than three hours of chillout music and nature sounds for kids to unwind after a hard day. Please pass the link along to your friends and family — to anyone who may help us spread the word about thp4kids. We know this unique website can help thousands of struggling kids. Now we just need help to make sure those kids know we’re there for them, any time they need us.

Adding Our Voice

The Humanity Project is proud to be part of the LGBT equal rights movement. We have spoken out about lesbian gay bisexual and transgender issues in this space and elsewhere. Our highly regarded Anti-bullying Through The Arts program always has had a common bond with efforts to end bullying against LGBT students.

Now we’re almost ready to launch a new website for socially isolated middle school students, including many LGBT students: thp4kids. “The Humanity Project 4 Kids.” We also meet regularly with an alliance of South Florida nonprofits that work to make life better for the LGBT community. Why? Everything the Humanity Project does is based on these ideas: that human beings each struggle for that all-important sense of individual value … that this struggle is at the root of many individual and social problems … and that those problems are greatly lessened whenever people begin to feel better about themselves in some way.

We believe humanitarian programs are much more effective when they accomplish a practical goal such as stopping bullying through helping individuals to gain a greater sense of importance. Because many LGBT kids and adults often have encountered negative messages about themselves, the Humanity Project wants to add our voice to those trying to change public attitudes. With thp4kids, we can offer some positive messages of our own at the same time.

As it happens, June is LGBT Pride Month. The Humanity Project salutes those working to end discrimination against the LGBT community in the U.S. and around the world. It is a cause we believe in, the great civil rights issue of our time. Progress is obvious in recent years but much more needs to happen, of course. June seems an appropriate moment to remind ourselves about this and to redouble our work toward that end.

Helping to Rebuild

POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS

This post will be brief. There’s no need to dwell on the obvious beyond a simple fact: The devastating Oklahoma tornado shattered many lives, and ended others … and the people there need our help.

The stories have been heart-rending and sometimes inspiring too, like that of the teacher who laid on top of her students during the height of the storm to protect them, risking her own life. She survived. Some of her kids didn’t, despite her courage. I was in tears listening to this brave woman recount those frightening moments from her hospital bed. There are many, many other such memories among survivors.

As always after these awful events, we ask ourselves the question: How can I help? Well, of course we can begin by making a donation. Every one of us can afford at least $10 and the simplest way to give that amount is to text the Red Cross. Just text their name as one word, REDCROSS, to 90999.  I did this and it’s quick and painless. We also can send out our thoughts and prayers to the Oklahoma residents struggling to recover. And we can do something else. We can appreciate our own good fortune, our blessings and our comforts … and use those positive feelings to help us treat others with more respect and kindness. To me, turning tragedy into something that improves the world is the best way possible to honor the dead and the injured and the suffering, doing all we can to tranform the world’s boundless supply of misery into an expanding pool of hope.

The Humanity Project Marches Forward

Humanity Project Board of Directors and friends at the May 18, 2013 "Above the Influence" march

The Humanity Project was proud to be part of an event this weekend here in South Florida, where our national nonprofit organization is based. We helped to plan and then participated in the big “Above the Influence” march and rally in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Despite some heavy rain at times, more than 2,000 students and adults turned out on May 18 to show their support for smart, healthy decisionmaking by youths. Above the Influence means above bullying, above substance abuse … and more.

The march harkened back in some ways to our own Humanity Project “Thousand Youth March for Humanity,” the nation’s first mass children’s march against bullying. That event was held in November 2008, well before the bullying issue became topical across the United States and beyond. We were lucky enough to have had perfect cloudless weather for our march. Above the Influence saw some heavy tropical rain at times … but you know what? That turned out to be an inspiring opportunity for the student participants. As they walked in a cold, pelting downpour, some of these kids organized impromptu chants that showed their spirit would not be dampened by something as trivial as the weather. I found their enthusiasm was contagious — and I’ll always remember these kids as an example to the rest of us about how to turn a negative into a positive. They were terrific. Above the Influence was spearheaded by Broward County Public Schools, the 6th largest district in the country, as well as by the local United Way. Rain or not, it was memorable in many ways. The Humanity Project was glad to lend our support.

The I Care Website ... By Teens, For Teens

(Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from the May 2013 Humanity Project email newsletter, Humanity News. You can sign up to receive the free newsletter once each month by clicking on the “Go” button in the right-hand column of this home page under “Sign up for our Email Newsletter.” We ask only for your email address.)

Wow! We really hope you’ll check out this new website, totally created by teens, for teens … for the Humanity Project. Talented students in Ms. Madeline Rosario’s web design classes took our I Care book and ran with it — and came up with this site for our program. They even recorded a music version of the I Care book’s rap poem, then created an animated video to go with it. You’ll find this on the home page, which is shown in a screenshot photo posted with this blog. (The video is a large file and can take a moment to load on some browsers. Just click and wait briefly … and have your speakers on for sure!) Here’s the I Care website address: www.thehumanityproject.com/icare 

At the core of this new website, of course, is our innovative book, created with funding from our great friends at State Farm. Students can download it (and the cool friend-to-friend safe driving pledge) for free at that same web address. We promoted that book in April to about 500 senior students at South Plantation High, where Ms. Rosario teaches. Now we’ll use the new website to attract many more teens all around the country to that book so they can share I Care with friends … and possibly save their friends’ lives in the process. There’s lots more happening to promote our cool teen driver safety program too. Including other clever videos as well as I Care sites on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

The Humanity Project still is doing all the great stuff we’ve always done such as our signature Anti-bullying Through The Arts program. The common thread among our work is this: The Humanity Project creates programs that offer new ways to use cooperation and social connection to tackle problems. Those problems now include school bullying, distracted teen driving and socially isolated youth, especially LGBT youth. Many major nonprofits such as CARE offer a variety of programs that center around a larger goal, not just one narrow task. At the Humanity Project, we believe that same approach provides a core mission for our work but allows us to innovate in any area where we feel our contribution will be new and valuable to the community. We really do care — and our I Care website and other program elements are simply one more expression of this.

Sears and the Humanity Project

We have some wonderful news to share this week. Our friends at Sears now have provided financial support for the Humanity Project’s acclaimed Anti-bullying Through The Arts program — and have joined our list of official sponsors. We are grateful to add this long-respected retailer to our growing roster of great sponsors and community partners. You can see them all by clicking on the Sponsors/Community Partners menu tab above, with such names as State Farm, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, Broward Sheriff’s Office, Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, Children’s Services Council of Broward County and Google among them. Sears and the Humanity Project have been partners in a joint anti-bullying effort for about a year now, the company’s “Team Up To Stop Bullying” online resource for those who need information and help with bullying issues. The Humanity Project has been proud to be part of that website, which includes dozens of other fine anti-bullying organizations around the United States. www.sears.com/teamup

For now, we simply want to welcome Sears to the Humanity Project family of community minded organizations and companies, donors and members and friends. And to say a sincere thank you to Sears too.

Tags: anti-bullying, Anti-bullying Through The Arts,bullies, bullying, Sears, Sears Team Up To Stop Bullying, Team Up To Stop Bullying, The Humanity Project

Faith ... In People

POSTED BY: BOB KNOTTS

It has been a tough week for those of us in this country, here in the United States. The Boston bombing, the ricin mailings, the chases, the shootings and arrests … and of course the deaths and injuries that followed another terrorist attack. At such times, it helps to look toward the light. And toward faith — faith in other people, ironically enough. Whatever your personal religious beliefs, a faith in humanity surely must be part of a useful belief system for any person. Toward that end, we offer this inspiring and heartbreaking photograph of eight-year-old Martin Richard, one of those killed in the Boston Marathon attack. And we also want to share some quotes from great minds that understood we need to rise above our pain to see the larger truth: The advance of humanity is slow and painful, and often halting. But it is real. Emerson called it “advancing on chaos and the dark.” And so the Humanity Project this week encourages a greater faith … in people:

• “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1869-1948, Indian spiritual leader
•  “We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.” Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, U.S. physicist born in Germany
• “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, American clergyman and civil rights leader
• “If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” Lao Tzu, 6th Century B.C., Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism