How will you create your Rules of Kindness? #RulesofKindness

What are your rules of kindness?  As a Hasbro Kindness Ambassador, I’m partnering with Hasbro and generationOn to share exciting information about the Rules of Kindness campaign and hope you’ll join me on this important journey…

Maybe you don’t have a formal set of rules written down, but when you stop to think about it, there are many unspoken “rules” you follow each day when it comes to kind, caring thoughts and actions.  When I asked my youngest teenage son what his first rule of kindness was, he answered simply, “Do good.”

Out of the mouths of babes, aye?  He’s truly spot on.  Kindness doesn’t have to be elaborate.  It can be as simple as visiting an elderly neighbor, offering a smile to greet everyone you encounter, or writing a “thank you” note to someone who has helped or inspired you.  It can be as simple as taking the opportunity to “do good” each day when and where possible.

Hasbro and generationOn, the youth service division of Points of Light, together have launched Rules of Kindness campaign to encourage kids and teens to create, share and act upon their own Rules of Kindness.  Now through October 17, teens, teachers, parents, and youth leaders can visit to sign up, submit their Rules of Kindness, and see how others are putting their Rules into action.

On the website, you’ll find tons of ideas, resources and inspiration for parents and teachers to help guide our kids and teens to put their kindness into action.  There’s also a list of service project ideas, a toolkit developed in partnership with nonprofit organization, Ashoka, and an activity created in partnership with pediatric psychologist Dr. Lynne Kenney to support youth in developing empathy and understanding kindness.  If you want to encourage your child to participate in community service projects, you’ll also be able to type in your zipcode and find a list of volunteer projects throughout the U.S.

The Rules of Kindness project goal is to get 75,000 youth volunteers to sign up and join Hasbro and generationOn’s movement for kindness.  Can you imagine what a wonderful impact this will have on our nation’s youth if we meet (and hopefully exceed) this goal?  We just added our names to the list and are sharing the information with our local schools, too.

For our family project, my sons have chosen the Photojournalism for Kindess Project.  We’re all going to join in on this activity and then share our photos and discuss what we observed.  I think this is a fantastic way to encourage all of us to be more present in the moment and aware of the positive, kind things going on around us in the world.  Too often it’s easy to focus on the negatives.  This will give my family the chance to seek out the good and kind actions transgressing in our daily lives and to participate fully in the kindness movement ourselves.  We’ll also have the option to involve others by discussing with them the project we are working on, which will be a delightful way to help spread the Rules of Kindness message.

Will you join us?  Get involved with the Rules of Kindness campaign today!

• visit
• share your story of kindness and see what others are doing, use #RulesofKindness and follow generationOn (@generationOn) and Hasbro (@Hasbro) on Twitter

The simple actions we take each day, our personal “rules of kindness,” can have a lovely, positive effect on the world and our own disposition.  By encouraging our youth to develop and create their rules of kindness, we will be setting the stage for future generations to come.  I hope you will join me in helping to make our schools and our world a better, kinder place to be!