Crew members serve as positive and approachable examples of kindness. 22 FRONTDOORS MEDIA | NOVEMBER 2018

Caption Here People Project, an award-winning nonprofit that provides youth development programming combining social and emotional learning with academics for kids 5 to 13. The organization works to build a generation of respectful, responsible, healthy and caring citizens by addressing issues that kids face — namely academic achievement, character education, childhood obesity, after-school hours and digital citizenship. The organization was created as an outgrowth of a social event Meyer created where women would get together to collectively prepare gifts for unsung heroes in the community. In 2011, after honoring neonatal intensive care unit nurses and the like, the group decided to honor teachers. “We were working with various Title I schools and were going to recognize some of their teachers, and they said you have to recognize all of our teachers. So what was supposed to be 575 women recognizing about 600 teachers turned into recognizing 10,000 teachers,” Meyer said. Rather than be put off by the challenge, Meyer leaned on her corporate background. A retired senior executive from PetSmart who says she “flunked retirement,” Meyer broke the request into its parts. She realized that, at the heart, teachers really want to help kids, so the group’s gift should help teachers help their students. “We talked about the big problem in schools with bullying, but we didn’t want to say the word bully. So we sat together in my garage and put together a list of attributes that would be the traits of a person who was not a bully, who was the antithesis of that: a kind person,” Meyer said. And then everybody left. “I was left with this list and thought what am I going to do now?” Meyer said. Inspiration struck in the form of her granddaughter Grace, who was then just entering school. Grace has special needs and Meyer contemplated how she wanted other kids to treat her. She chose 10 words that if other kids would act on, would make Grace’s life OCTOBER 2018 | FRONTDOORS MEDIA 23 NOVEMBER 2018 | FRONTDOORS MEDIA 23