Researching How To Share Kindness
In December 2016, Born This Way Foundation partnered with The Today Show to create the interactive Share Kindness Experience at 30 Rock! Research is core to our mission, so having the ability to use the fun and festive event as an opportunity to collect data was something we could not pass up!
Thousands of visitors came through the space during its three week run and we heard from hundreds who took the time to take a condensed version of our Born Brave Experience Survey. Participants ranged in age – from 13 to 75! – and represented a variety of sexual orientations and ethnicities. The survey included 13 questions and was designed to allow participants to self-report how kind they view themselves to be.
Even during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, over 90% of the participants reported that they would consider themselves to be a kind person. And even in New York City – a place not often associated with friendliness – over 85% said that they would treat others kindly, regardless of who that person was!
Over 25,000 people walked through the doors of Share Kindness and our team was able to meet so many incredible families and individuals who shared their stories with us.
I remember one family who had traveled from Florida for their annual New York holiday trip. They were a mother and father traveling with their daughter and had the pleasure of speaking with them for over an hour. They explained to me that they take this trip every year to New York City, but almost did not come this year because they lost their son over the summer. They went on to say that he had been a huge Lady Gaga fan and followed the work of the Foundation since it began. They booked the trip last minute and when they arrived at 30 Rock to see the Share Kindness Experience they knew it was a sign that they were supposed to be there.
Having the opportunity to meet them and hear their story has been one of my most cherished memories from my time thus far at Born this Way Foundation.
With the help of amazing individuals like this, we were able to collect over 3,700 decorated lunch bags for Kids Food Basket and over 3,400 cards for men and women serving overseas in the military for the American Red Cross.
Our BTWF Team loved being a part of Share Kindness and having the opportunity to incorporate some of our research into the experience was amazing. We can’t wait to share all of the exciting things we learned from the latest round of our Born Brave Experiences Survey!
In the meantime to learn more about the research our team is doing you can head to Research page.
Kindly Yours,
Sam
This past weekend I had the privilege of attending Hack UNL on behalf of both Born This Way Foundation and Hack Harassment. While I have attended numerous hackathons in the past, I was beyond excited for Hack UNL. The weekend-long event, hosted at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, combined the problem solving know-how of engineering and the expertise of psychology with the passion and creativity of young people to come up with tools that could help make the internet a little bit kinder!
What made Hack UNL unique – and such a success – were its organizers. While most hackathons are run solely by engineering and computer science departments, and as a result attract primarily computer science students, Hack UNL was put on by the members of the School Psychology department. They brought their knowledge to the table while working collaboratively with the school’s Computer Science and Engineering departments, attracting education, psychology, and science and engineering students from a variety of ages and grade levels. Even some marketing students took part!
This event was put on by Raul Palacios, a school psychology doctoral student who is both a member of the BTWF research team as well as a Hack Harassment Campus Ambassador.
Raul and his team did an amazing job, building in opportunities for students to get to know each other at the interdisciplinary event. Personally, what I found most amazing was how the students grouped up with individuals from all different educational backgrounds. Almost every group included both computer science and psychology students. Hack UNL’s organizers also made sure participants had the chance to hear about relevant research to help inform their projects. As a representative of BTWF, I presented research on the power of kindness and the importance of being kind online.
The final projects were some of the best I have seen. One winning project was a Twitter bot that sends uplifting tweets to individuals who are receiving hateful messages with the goal of adding more kindness to Twitter feeds. Inspired by the research stating how kindness is beneficial to your health, another team created an app modeled after popular workout watches which allows you to track your kind acts and compete with your friends, while also setting daily kindness goals for yourself.
The response from the participating students was inspiring, with many saying they would love to attend again next year! As a graduate from a school psychology program, I am so proud of Raul and the entire UNL School Psychology department for their hard work and dedication to this cause. Congratulations to all of the winners and to everyone who participated. It is because of students like yourselfers that we are one step closed to building a kinder and braver world and a more inclusive internet.
Here at Born This Way Foundation, research is the backbone of all of our work and there is no better example of that than our Born Brave Experiences Survey. We’re excited to announce that we’ll be concluding Phase III of the survey this Sunday, March 5th, and we need your help to make it as successful as possible.
To help illustrate why this research is so important, I wanted to share how I spent last week. On February 24th, I was able to accomplish one of my long time personal goal of mine and present at the National Association of School Psychologists Conference in San Antonio, Texas, along side our amazing research team from the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
For our presentation, we drew on data from Phase II of the Born Brave Experience Survey. We were interested in the influence of parental level of education and young adults’ (ages 19 – 25) experiences with social and emotional support. The aim of this research was to understand the relationship between participants’ social-emotional outcomes (i.e. depression, anxiety, and ability to cope with stress) and their parents/caregivers educational attainment. We hypothesized that young adults whose parents attained higher levels of education would report better social-emotional outcomes.
We found that young adults, whose parents graduated from college, demonstrated increased ability to cope with stress, lower levels of anxiety, and lower levels of depression when compared to young adults whose parents graduated from high school or whose mothers did not graduate from high school.
Our results provide evidence that such young adults may need increased in social and emotional support. Furthermore, mental health professionals should consider ways to increase social-emotional supports within their communities to facilitate mental wellness and effective coping strategies in youth, young adults, and their families. Our research supports Born This Way Foundation’s on-line support and community activism that fosters kindness and bravery.
It was incredible for the opportunity to share some of the data from our second round of Born Brave Experiences Research with both practicing psychologist and aspiring psychologist from all over the country!
We would not have been able to accomplish any of this without your help and we want to thank you all for taking the time to participate in and share the survey with your networks!
-Sam Hanson
On Thursday, October 27th Born This Way Foundation and Monster High hosted our very first Kind Monsters EDU event. Along with 150 middle school students from the LA area, we spent the day embarking on some creative problem solving to improve their schools.
The morning began with the students getting to hear first hand from a designer from Monster High exactly how the brand was created. Each Monster High Doll is different and unique however, they are all accepted for who they are.
(Here at Born This Way Foundation, we’re so proud to have our very own Monster High Doll, Zomby Gaga, modeled after our co-founder Lady Gaga!)
This got the brain juices flowing as the students were then able to create their own perfect “Monster Student”. Using everything from pipe cleaners to Play Doh, our teams were able to stand by and watch the creativity spark.
The students worked together with peers from different schools to come up with stories and backgrounds for their own “little monsters”.
My favorite part of the morning was getting to hear all of the stories and traits that the young people created for their monsters. Hearing descriptions using words like “kind, brave, different, happy, loyal and trustworthy” was so encouraging.
The afternoon absolutely blew me away.
I spent the week leading up to Kind Monsters being so afraid to facilitate my first event. I was so nervous about getting up in front of people and speaking and I was terrified of embarrassing myself. However, when I got to hear dozens of students from the participating schools stand up on stage and tell a room full of their peers, teachers and principals exactly what they want to change in their school and how they plan on changing it; I was inspired by each and every one of them.
Representatives from each school spoke about about problems like bullying, violence, cliques and a lack of inclusivity in their schools and then told us all how they plan on fixing these problems.
Each student who spoke was poised, prepared and passionate about making a change.
I am so thankful I was given the opportunity to help plan and facilitate this event. And I left excited to continue working with these students and help them change the cultures and climates in their schools.
If you want to be a part of the Kind Monsters movement, you can take the #KindMonsters pledge!
I hope you’ll be a part of our mission to make every school kinder, braver and more inclusive.
Never in a million years did I think that I would be sitting on the South Lawn of the White House, surrounded by the hundreds of people working towards creating positive social change in our country, listening to the President of the United States talking with Leonardo DiCaprio. However, that is exactly where I found myself on Monday October 3rd, when I was fortunate enough to represent Born This Way Foundation at the South X South Lawn festival.
Along with great music, dance parties, temporary tattoo artists, and not to mention a great view, there were inspiring speakers and panels. From CEOs to nonprofit leaders, everyone was focused on how we can all work together to use our knowledge and resources to ensure a bright future for both ourselves and the generations after us. With the incredible group of people that were gathered it was no surprise that each person we talked to asked the same question “How can we help support your work?” Our team could not have been more excited to tell them about Channel Kindness. We were blown away by the response. Everyone we told wanted to apply themselves, nominate a young person in their lives, or were offering up a tool or resource to help us grow the program.
It is days that this, where I leave an event excited to go back to work despite how tired I am, that remind me how important the work we are doing really is.
The beauty of the work we are doing is that you do not have to travel anywhere to make a difference. You can recognize and amplify every day acts of kindness in your own schools and communities. Your actions can create a ripple effect and we hope that, eventually we can drown out the negativity that we have become so numb to.
On behalf of Born This Way Foundation, I would like to thank the White House for including us in this amazing event. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to meet and share our work with so many wonderful people!
And to all the amazing innovators and change-makers we met, thank you for all the work you do. Thank you for making the world a better place. And thank you for joining us in our mission to amplify kindness.
Even if you weren’t at SXSL, you can still be a part of Channel Kindness! Apply to be a reporter here. Or do you know someone who would be a great voice for compassion in your community? Nominate them to be a Channel Kindness reporter!
