Bonner Kindness Project

Kelsey Walls showing love in front of the Bonner House.
Photo Courtesy of the CU  Bonner Program.

As current and former college students, we all remember the struggle to stay positive, especially near the end of the semester. With December quickly approaching, we have a variety of things to potentially dread: Finishing up assignments, getting assignments turned in and graded, finals and for some of us, watching close friends graduate.

    Tana Miller, the Senior Intern for the Bonner Scholar Program, decided that Concord needed some positivity. As a senior intern, she planned and organized events throughout the semester for Bonner students. “Bonner is a community service foundation that also focuses on student development. Throughout a students’ college attendance, they are required to complete community service and training and enrichment programs to receive their scholarship award,” Miller explains.

    According to Miller, kindness month is in November. She states that with some negative things going on around students, they wanted to do something about it. “… We decided it would be nice to allow students to be able to write something kind or an act of kindness they want to share or hear for themselves to dismiss negative and enforce positives,” states Miller.

 Being kind is especially important on campuses like ours. “Concord is a small bodied campus and we have been known to maintain a friendly environment this is important to keep us unified as a student body. Kindness also helps with improved health and less stress and those are important factors with being a college student,” Miller says.

    This commendable project has a delightful goal for everyone on campus. “Our goal was to be able to wrap our kindness chain around the Bonner house,” explains Miller.

    When she says wrap the chain around the Bonner house, she literally means it! “We are going to take the strips of paper that were wrote on for the kindness chain and staple them together for it to wrap around the Bonner house,” Miller states. She believes that this project can symbolize the unity of our community.

    Ryan Atwell, a student on campus, believes that Bonner Scholars really make a difference on campus because of the positive light they spread. “I have always seen Bonner Scholars doing different activities on campus to promote the well-being of other students on campus,” says Atwell.

    Atwell believes that the Bonner Scholars should continue doing this. “I feel like students will see this as a positive activity, especially when finals are coming around and usually people are stressed out. So I feel that this will bring some happiness to everyone,” Atwell states. So with some of the negativity that December brings with it, the Bonner Scholars made a positive difference. It is obvious that some students noticed their efforts.