Halle and friends plan to fight ‘January blahs’ with kindness (4 photos)

A group of Korah Collegiate students is launching a Kindness Bracelet program to combat the ‘January blahs’ when they inevitably arrive.

“We realized after Christmas is a time when some people may have that ‘back to school’ feeling and need to be uplifted, so we decided to do something about that now, before people come back after the break,” said Grade 12 Korah student Halle Zachary.

“Everybody gets a little bummed out about school starting again after Christmas so it’s something happy and exciting to start,” Zachary smiled when speaking to SooToday Wednesday.

Showing acts of kindness simply makes people feel better about themselves, as well as helping others, she said.

The idea is for a bracelet-holding student to perform a good deed, then move the small, attached, silver-coloured ‘kindness’ tag from bead to bead around the bracelet, and, after 20 good deeds are done, to hand the bracelet off to a friend to do the same.

Kindness, said Korah Grade 11 student Owen Appleton, can consist of simple acts such as holding a door for someone or a nice greeting, within and without the Korah school community.

“For me, it’s important to be kind to make someone else feel better, someone who’s going through a rough time… it’s a big part of mental health,” Zachary said.

“I think it’ll help people deal with bullying quite a bit,” Appleton said.  

Zachary, Appleton and other students will soon be making the bracelets themselves, in their spare time, and will distribute them free of charge, at random, to their fellow students next month.

They hope to make 50 bracelets to start, with the hope other school groups and community partners (such as local businesses) might step in to help with the cost of purchasing more beads for more bracelets.

“There’s a therapeutic aspect to the beads, (which are ceramic, brown with a subtle shade of gold, representing Korah’s school colours),” Zachary said.

The beads were ordered online.

The bracelets will be available for students to pick up for free at Korah’s Colts Corner store, which started up last year, where merchandise such as Korah shirts, sweaters, hats, necklaces, cheerleader pom poms and other items are sold Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 

Proceeds from sales of merchandise sold at Colts Corner goes back into student programming, such as a Grade 7 and 8 dance coming up on Friday.

Zachary, who also serves as an Algoma District School Board (ADSB) student trustee, said Korah teacher/mentors Jennifer Barbeau, Andra Wilson and Lisa Fletcher have been positive influences and a guiding force behind the project.