Cool To Be Kind

Cool to be Kind is the buzz term derived from an anti-bullying campaign created by Louise Burfitt-Dons in 2001 to promote kindness as an anti-bullying initiative which has had global appeal and been adopted in many countries.
Anti-Bullying Campaign
Louise Burfitt-Dons devised the campaign as a message to young children about the importance of kind behaviour. It began with the rhyme ‘Don’t Be Rude, Don’t Exclude, Don’t Push In, Don’t Hurt to Win. It’s cool to be Kind!' The phrase was adopted from the adage It's cruel to be Kind. Following the success of the campaign "Cool to be Kind" was adopted as a pro-kindness campaign and anti-bullying initiative in several countries in the world.
The initiative was designed to promote the psychological opposite of the negative behaviour of bullying. While state of the art programs such as the Dan Olweus model were found to be effective in reducing the instance of bullying by 50% where physical aggression was being enforced the reductions in verbal and psychological based peer led abuse were harder to address. The challenge therefore was to implement good behaviour habits. Different organisations have adopted the slogan for their own kindness campaigns.
Kindness and Bullying
At the time Cool to be Kind was launched bullying behaviour within society was on the increase and kindness and consideration for others was decreasing. The nature of bullying had altered to a more insidious, manipulative form which went unreported. Statistics showed that 80 per cent of children would not be involved in bullying activity unless they were encouraged to do so by their peer group as the ‘in’ thing to do. The campaign therefore aimed to change peer dynamics and make kindness ‘cool’ again as it was clear that many potentially bullying situations arose out of rude or inconsiderate behaviour towards others.
Resurgence of Kindness Campaigns
In recent years acts of kindness have been increasing. In 2011 Transport for London launched a campaign for travellers to send in kindness stories In 2012 The Australian Government launched a project to educated people to be Cool To Be Kind to Animals In 2014 Anthony Head and Sarah Fisher set up the Cool To Be Kind community to promote kindness to animals In April 2015 the Huffington Post reported it experiencing a comeback In Australia a photo project is recording the kind things young people do for others

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