Judith Trustone (LTA ’07, ACG ’05) leads a Community Kindness Circle as an Antidote to Violence, Cruelty and Loss of Civility in the Swarthmore Borough Community room at 121 Park Avenue. On the second Saturday of every month, starting this week, January 9 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm.
In a Kindness Circle, participants, who range in age from 5-75, experience, according to scientists, feelings of empowerment, an increased sense of peace and well-being, deeper connections to our neighbors, and enhancing positive community “vibes.”
Those unable to attend can participate by joining the “Virtual Kindness Circle” where they sit wherever they are and focus on Kindness at 4:00 pm eastern every Saturday (or whenever they can.) People join in from the 91 Kindness projects here and around the world, in hospitals, schools and prisons. The curious are invited to be silent observers. Children are welcome if they are able to sit in silence.
Kindness Weeks are now being held in many towns and cities across America, and in schools such as the Rose Tree Media’s alternative high school, Moorestown, NJ, where Kindness Week has been the focus for fifteen years, and recently in Swarthmore.
Trustone is an award-winning author, publisher, filmmaker and activist who believes daily committed acts of conscious kindness can be an energetic antidote to violence as well as improving feelings of well-being in those doing acts of kindness and those receiving the kindness by raising serotonin levels, the “Happy Hormone.” Drawing on her half century of human rights activism, her focus the past fifteen years has been teaching creative writing to anti-violence prisoners and publishing some of their work. In addition to the Kindness circles, she has also created Kindness Cards with prisoners, and to date, 50,000 of them have been distributed worldwide.
The Kindness Circles are not affiliated with any religious organization.
For information about Community Kindness Circles or to schedule a Circle for your group, or to screen her documentaries, “Soothing and Nurturing Human Spirits” and “Healing Justice: a journey into Shadow America,” call Judith Trustone, Director, Sagewriters & The Global Kindness Revolution at 610.328.6101 or info@Sagewriters.org.
