{"id":52963,"date":"2018-10-11T15:10:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T22:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=52963"},"modified":"2018-10-12T10:12:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-12T17:12:46","slug":"nau-kindness-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-kindness-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Valentines: NAU’s Health Promotions spreads smiles across campus with kindness campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, Melissa Griffin<\/strong>, the director of Health Promotions<\/a> at Northern Arizona University, was walking to her car when she saw a note on her windshield. It read, \u201cyou make me happy.\u201d It made her day, and more than that, it got her thinking: Could the university create an initiative that encourages people share random acts of kindness like this one? After doing research and talking with colleagues, NAU\u2019s kindness campaign was created.<\/p>\n

The Kind Campaign, which started in 2009 at Pepperdine University, was originally intended to bring awareness and healing to the negative and lasting effects of girl-against-girl bullying. As it grew, the campaign shifted to focus on health issues, including sexual assault, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and mental health. The movement has spread to college campuses throughout the United States in hopes of reminding students to be kind to themselves and others.<\/p>\n

As Griffin put it, students didn\u2019t want to talk about drug and alcohol problems, so things had to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to engage students,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone\u2019s like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to talk about alcohol prevention, I don\u2019t want to talk about sexual violence prevention. Wait, maybe I can talk about helping people and being nice to them.\u2019 So, it was really just shifting the context for the work that we do and putting it in a more positive light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To engage students, Health Promotions created an awareness campaign. In addition to positive messages displayed around campus, students are encouraged to make use of pass-along cards, stickers, buttons and posters with messages like , \u201cNAU is great because of you\u201d and \u201cyou are awesome\u201d in hopes of spreading smiles to friends and strangers alike. Some pass-along cards even have a blank side, for people to write their own messages like, \u201cyou look great today.\u201d Everyday Valentines, if you will. People also are encouraged to participate in the campaign by using #BeKindNAU on their social media whenever they see an act of kindness on campus.<\/p>\n

No matter how people share kindness, the important thing is that they do. The main goal of Health Promotions is to get students engaged, so they can be active bystanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just trying to encourage helping behaviors,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cLetting people know that this is our identity, this is who we are as a culture. It is all of our responsibilities to take care of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

After seeing posters and pass-along cards, it didn\u2019t take long for other departments on campus to recognize the importance of the campaign and follow suit.<\/p>\n

NAU Admissions<\/a> has the True Blue Ambassadors<\/a> talk about the campaign while giving daily tours to prospective students and their families. People on the tour receive a folder with information along with a kindness pass-along card.<\/p>\n

True Blue Ambassadors have been practicing the idea of kindness for a while, said admissions program coordinator Jennifer Gargano. <\/strong>As part of their job, the admissions staff is required to travel. While they\u2019re away, True Blue Ambassadors often write the staff members letters, thanking them for what they do and wishing them well on their trip.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The admissions office can be busy, especially over the summer and at the start of the year. To make sure kindness stays at the top of people’s minds, Gargano and most of the staff members keep the kindness poster displayed on their door.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis idea of keeping the morale up and showing kindness to everybody is something we strive for,\u201d Gargano said.<\/p>\n

Just like True Blue Ambassadors, the Student Health Advocacy Committee<\/a> (SHAC) has promoted kindness well before the campaign began. At campus events, students painted kindness rocks, then SHAC placed them throughout campus to help brighten students\u2019 days.<\/p>\n

Now when SHAC tables events, they provide students with flower pots. The students are encouraged to paint the pots and are given a seed as part as the kindness campaign. SHAC president Janice Baldwin-Rowe <\/strong>likened it to planting a seed of kindness.<\/p>\n

SHAC will be tabling the next Paws Your Stress event on Oct. 24. For other Health Promotion events, visit their event calendar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyone interested in getting free materials such as stickers, posters and pass-along cards should contact the Health Promotions office at healthpromotion@nau.edu<\/a> or (928) 523-2131.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, Melissa Griffin, the director of Health Promotions at Northern Arizona University, was walking to her car when she saw a note on her windshield. It read, \u201cyou make me happy.\u201d It made her day, and more than that, it got her thinking: Could the university create an initiative that encourages people…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":53000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}