Can engaging in one kind act a day change individual hearts and minds — and even the world? Speakers at the Kindness Summit think so.
The daylong event featured politicians, faith leaders, a social media influencer, a best-selling business author and the co-founder of UNITE and they spoke with one voice: Kindness matters.
The inaugural Kindness Summit, which took place at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Friday, April 12, was presented by One Kind Act a Day, a project started by Khosrow Semnani and the Semnani Family Foundation.
When Semnani asked to hold the summit at the U, President Taylor Randall said he was all in.
“We have to get back to some basic values that make our society click,” Randall said in remarks at the event. “I said, ‘Sure, can we do it once a week?’ We’re all in. We would love to be known as the kindness university. That would be absolutely spectacular for us.”
Randall used the occasion to announce that April 24 has been designated as Day of Kindness at the U. Kindness ambassadors will be handing out donuts and sharing words of encouragement with students. Learn more at belong.utah.edu.
April 24 is a reading day for students, who are in the last weeks of the semester, stressed with completing projects and taking final exams and, for many, the next steps after graduating.
“It’s one of the more stressful moments of the year because you realize, ‘Gosh, I can’t get this all in my head in one day, can I?’” Randall said, adding the hope is kind words and lots of donuts will actually make it a great day as students head into the final stretch.
Here are highlights from some speakers at the Kindness Summit:
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson: We cannot overestimate the power of individual actions and the importance that kindness and goodwill have in making us as people more resilient, giving us courage to overcome difficulties and helping us live up to the blessings of freedom that we’ve inherited. . . . Being proximate to people who are different than us, approaching people and problems with a sense of curiosity and a sense of goodwill is something that we have focused on in our administration and we’ll continue to focus on because proximity is powerful, kindness is contagious.
Khosrow Semnani, One Kind Act a Day: In 2021, when, in the words of our lieutenant governor, there was so much polarization, so much lack of friendship and kindness and goodness among people, I felt an obligation for me, who has a different perspective and has experienced the goodness in America, that I had to do something. . . . And the whole idea of One Kind Act is it transcends race, religion, background, color, language, everything, all religions, all races. They all have one in common, there’s a common denominator, and that’s kindness. And we don’t have to be one village or the other. We don’t have to be from one race or the other. We can all support kindness.
Tim Shriver, co-creator of The Dignity Index: What I’d like us to think about here today is kindness not just as a value or an action, but as a way of seeing. How do we change our lens so that we don’t see from the head, which is sorted — rich, poor, black, white, good, bad, nice, not nice, a friend, a foe, all these judgments that we’re all making all the time. We see this in Special Olympics all the time. People judge books by their cover, and it leads to them to distort the capacity to see the person who’s right in front of them. . . We’ve distilled these skills largely from the work of K-12 teachers who help children learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. We’ve tried to translate the wisdom of sixth- and eighth graders into the language of adults so that adults would actually start to recognize that what we teach children, we should actually practice. . . . I hope that by gathering us together here in this room and remembering the power of kindness, we will remember that the real wisdom is changing ourselves so that we become people who look from the lens of kindness and see it everywhere and remark and support and develop it wherever we can.
Chester Elton, best-selling author: How do we develop a culture of kindness and does it benefit us in ways more than just making our moms proud? Well, we’ve heard some talk about this already today and I’m interested to talk to you about a culture of kindness that starts with assuming positive intent. . . . It’s the soft stuff that makes the hard stuff easier, right? And this is the stuff that your mom and dad told you when you were five years old. Remember to say please and thank you. Clean up after yourself. Don’t push. Don’t hit, don’t bite. That bite thing is still good advice at the moment. . . . I’m here to tell you that being kind is not a soft skill. It’s a power skill. . . . And how do you do it? Do it now. You see somebody needs something, don’t hesitate. Do it now. You think you’ll remember, ‘Oh, well, I’ll catch up at the end of the week or at the end of the day. No, you won’t. You get busy. Do it now. . . . Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. We can be kind.
Darren Margolias, Beast Philanthropy: I think that that feeling that you get the first time you have an opportunity to do something really special for somebody or help somebody out ignites a spark in your own mind or in your own heart that makes you want to continue to do it. . . . When I go and watch reaction videos on our channel, so many people come away from it saying that they have a new level of gratitude for what they themselves have — that something as simple as drinking water that comes out of a tap in your house is such a privilege. When kids watch our channel, they realize how lucky they are. We also get to educate them in a way that resonates with their souls, it resonates with their humanity, and they care about these issues. And the most important reason of all of them is that we inspire them to change themselves. They want to go out and get involved and do all of these things. And it’s become really weird to me because I had the realization at the end of last year, this philanthropy is no longer a charity. This philanthropy is turning into a movement all around the world. People are going and taking the message of what we are doing and they’re doing things themselves.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall, Salt Lake City: What I want to tell you is that I want you to love yourself. We pick up other rocks that we hurt ourselves with — shame, guilt, disappointment, regret — and we tend to carry those rocks around sometimes for the entire rest of our lives. And I want to ask you to be kind to yourself and recognize that the more we build up that wall of these, I’ve taken a metaphor way too far here, but we build this little wall around our hearts that keeps us from being courageous enough to be kind to others, to smile at a stranger, tell somebody, can I do anything for you? That takes a little bit of courage. And the more you carry those painful rocks around about yourself, the harder it’s going to be to not just do those things, but even see the need around you. So, I want you to love yourself. That’s what I want to tell you today and the ripple effects from your heart, when you have that grace and compassion, sometimes forgiveness for yourself will absolutely affect your community.