The Great Kindness Challenge is an annual week-long challenge organized by the Villano Student Congress. It started on Monday, February 12, and ended on Friday, February 16. It required participants to do at least ten acts of kindness during that week. A checklist of twenty-eight suggested acts of kindness was created to assist students. Some people started planning what acts of kindness they wanted to do before the challenge even started.

“I plan on finishing ALL [twenty-eight] tasks on the sheet within the one week timespan!” declared fifth-grader Carter Ostroff.

The tasks on the checklist included holding the door for people, helping someone with homework, telling someone why you appreciate them, and giving someone a compliment.

“I’ve done it since I started Villano and finished everything [every year]!” exclaimed sixth-grader and assistant newspaper editor Maddy Downing. Both Ostroff and Downing kept their promise and completed the challenge.

This year, about seventy people participated in the Great Kindness Challenge including our own Villano View advisor, April Catuogno. Participants’ names were announced at the February “O Show” and displayed on the “Kind Kids” bulletin board in the main hallway. If you didn’t get a chance to participate in the Challenge this year, the Student Congress urges you to try it next year. The group says that kindness is contagious meaning all it takes is one person to spread kindness and others will follow.