When I was reading my son’s latest school report, there was a lot of detail about the curriculum and his academic results…but one sentence his headteacher wrote stood out above all of that.

“Max always makes sure everyone has someone to play with at break times.”

I could have stopped reading then and there. It's the best report I could have asked for.

I really believe that ’kind’ is THE most important thing a child can be. Not only because it helps other people but also because it creates strong, resilient communities, encourages creativity, improves our physical health and helps us feel happier. There is no downside to kindness.

This time 5 years ago, Greig (who runs our School of Kindness) and I were in a Year 4 classroom running our first ever School Kindness Workshop. We had a simple goal: to empower children by helping them realise that the little choices they make every day have the power to change people’s lives, change the world, and improve their own physical and mental health at the same time.

Since then, we have worked with more 25,000 children, visited No. 10 Downing Street, been on the tele with some amazing children we’ve helped, and expanded our School of Kindness into something better than we ever imagined.

As well as our kindness workshops, we provide free curriculum-linked lessons plans to hundreds of teachers, give small grants to children through our Kindness Fund, and we have an amazing group of Kids’ Kindness Club members who help us spread kindness every single week.

This coming school year, we’re aiming to work with more children than we have in the past 5 years combined. We even have a new team member - the amazing Krish - who will be running workshops in the North West for us.

Everything we do at the School of Kindness is free. It was launched with prize money from the Clarins Woman of the Year Award, and is now sponsored by the kind people at NBB Recycled Furniture. None of what we do would be possible without them.

Let’s raise kids who care more about what kind of person they are, and less about what they look like, how much money they have or how many followers they have on social media!

Written by Jaime