The SevenDays Ripple of Kindness and its impact
By Emma Sandler
Throughout my high school years, I had the privilege of being an active member of the SevenDays Kindness Youth Leadership Team. With a mission of promoting kindness throughout the Kansas City community, I developed a connection with SevenDays, a nonprofit organization that provided me with an array of opportunities to create positive change within my school and beyond. I felt a personal connection to the legacy of Reat Underwood, a fellow student of Blue Valley High School. In April 2014, a white supremacist murdered Reat, his grandfather Dr. William Corpron and Terri LaManno outside of Jewish facilities because of his hate for Jews; those he killed were not Jewish. This tragic event inspired the start of SevenDays.
As a Jewish student navigating a predominantly non-Jewish environment at school, my connection to SevenDays was deeply intertwined with my cultural heritage. I experienced antisemitism at my high school, causing me to feel isolated. I felt uncomfortable as an openly Jewish student. SevenDays provided me with both an outlet to promote kindness and connected me with Jewish mentors and peers who share the same values of Judaism as me. Values such as mitzvot, tikkun olam (repairing the world), and gemilut hasadim (acts of lovingkindness) are intertwined with the core values of SevenDays.
From contributing to the planning of the annual Kindness Breakfast to delivering impactful speeches at numerous schools, I spread the mission of SevenDays. Through my role on the Kindness Youth Leadership Team, I gained invaluable leadership skills and a deeper understanding of interfaith dialogue. I was lucky to share my passion for SevenDays with my younger sister, Samantha, as she joined the Kindness Youth Leadership Team. The two of us were quite the team and I loved collaborating with her for events.
SevenDays has profoundly shaped my perspective on the world. My Jewish identity served as a guiding light throughout my journey with SevenDays, remembering mitzvot and how each act of kindness has a profound sense of purpose and meaning. My time in SevenDays and as a member of their Kindness Youth Leadership Team remains a part of me as a student at The University of Kansas, where my goal is to become a neonatal nurse practitioner. I understand that compassion has a significant influence on patient care, particularly in the sensitive field of neonatal nursing. As I embark on this new chapter in my academic and professional journey, I am inspired by the ongoing legacy of SevenDays to approach my work
Emma Sandler is a member of the Jewish community, who graduated from Blue Valley High School in 2023 and now attends the University of Kansas.