KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Communities across the metro area are promoting kindness this week as the 10th anniversary approaches since the killings at two Jewish facilities in Overland Park.
Reat Underwood, William Corporon, and Terri LaManno were murdered in acts of religious hatred.
Since that horrible incident, kindness walks became a tradition across the Blue Valley School District.
“We think it's really important to make sure students are aware of what happened, but also learn from it," Blue Valley High School senior Abby Reeves said. "By doing this walk, we’re really spreading kindness throughout the school.”
The kindness walks take place during the school day and are part of programs started by SevenDays, an organization that works to combat hate and promote kindness.
Mindy Corporon, who is Reat's mom and William's daughter, founded the group after their deaths.
"This walk kind of symbolizes a moment for everyone in the school to kind of think about how they can spread kindness and how they can take an act of hate that happened so long ago to someone really close to us," Reeves said. "While horrible things are happening, we can combat that with kindness and we can make a difference just with little acts in our daily lives."
Students also did an act of kindness by writing letters to person of their choice.
Claire Younger wrote a note to one of her favorite teachers.
"Thank you for making such a positive impact in my life and so many other student's lives," she wrote. "I know that everyone can really see that, and I just wanted to show him that kindness."
The students wrote with compassion and walked with intention, proving kindness starts with just one step.
"Not everyone always agrees on the same thing, but kindness is something everyone can agree on," Reeves said.
