The goal of Choose Kindness is straightforward — to promote kindness within the city, schools and with community members, according to Sara Allen, committee co-chair.  This month, the Choose Kindness committee is promoting a different act of kindness each day. Additionally, there will be a special “Choose Kindness Week” beginning with Valentine’s Day. The month will end with a community service project. 

On Feb. 1, Choose Kindness Month kicked off by gathering donated socks for refugees, elderly and individuals experiencing homelessness. Throughout the month, residents are encouraged to choose kindness through different daily actions. These acts of kindness ideas are printed on a calendar that was given out at the kickoff event and posted on social media. 

Some of the kindness ideas are: Give someone a hug who really needs it, put a kind note in a family member’s lunch, make peace with someone who has hurt you, take the time to tell someone to have a great day and praise someone out loud for something they do well. 

During Choose Kindness Week, starting on Feb. 14, ideas for serving include making sugar cookies together as a family, writing a thank you note to a teacher and supporting local businesses. Allen said that residents should watch for a giant lighted heart on the mountain to help commemorate the special week of kindness. 

To end the month of kindness, a community service project will be held Feb. 26 from 10-11 a.m. at the Pleasant Grove Recreation Center, 547 S. Locust. At the event, volunteers will be putting together baskets of books, toys, games, socks and handwritten notes. The baskets will be taken by the Pleasant Grove High School Kindness Club to Housing Connect in Salt Lake City to be given to refugees.

Allen said that at last year’s community service project, 150 people came and put together blankets with hearts on them to hang on children’s hospital room doors around the country. 

An important part of the Choose Kindness initiative is the kindness clubs that exist in schools, according to Allen. “Within our city organization, we have developed a kindness club in every single school in our city and in the high school,” she said. “They consist of students of all ages. There’s a different lesson plan for every month that teaches a way of putting intentional kindness into action. We teach that lesson within the kindness clubs.”

Allen added that the high school kindness club does both service projects and lunch activities. “After lessons, we bus them to elementary schools in our city and they will go into all classes in that school and teach about how to put kindness into action,” she said. 

Committee co-chair Brooklin Burns works closely with the schools to bring them the Choose Kindness program in conjunction with her organization, The Ripple Effect. Along with Allen, Burns and Charlene Day, a committee of community volunteers plan events, service projects and ways to promote kindness throughout the year in Pleasant Grove. 

More information, and the Choose Kindness Month calendar, can be found on the Choose Kindness PG Facebook page and on Instagram @choosekindnesspg.