Westmoreland Intermediate Unit wants to spread students' kindness via video

Students from around Pennsylvania have a chance to share their message of kindness at this year’s Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units’ annual conference at Seven Springs.

The Westmoreland Intermediate Unit is collecting short video messages and plans to play them at the conference Sept. 20-22. Curriculum services director Tim Hammill said he hopes to get a diverse response from students of all ages statewide about their visions of kindness and what it means to them.

“It really could be anything and that’s what we’re hoping for,” he said.

Videos should be 60 seconds or less and can be submitted online with a parent’s permission through Sept. 3 at bit.ly/Kindness-Video.

The Westmoreland Intermediate Unit is having its second shot at hosting the annual conference after 2020’s event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. A team-building event to stuff backpacks for homeless students that had been planned for the conference was instead taken over by intermediate unit staff members. Those backpacks, filled with items donated from community groups, were delivered to intermediate units around the state late last year.

Westmoreland Intermediate Unit officials are sticking with the kindness theme for the 2021 conference, but had to think of a way to not make the project burdensome on school districts that have been vacillating between in-person and virtual learning for much of the school year.

“We decided to try to simplify that piece of the student engagement that we were looking for,” Hammill said. “It’s an individual project, it doesn’t require the school districts to oversee or manage.”

Organizers will have the video messages sprinkled throughout the conference. Hammill said he expects they may receive some simple statements about a student’s thoughts on kindness or maybe something more creative like a song or artwork — “something that is thought-provoking hopefully.”

“It’s really a unique approach, something we’ve never done before,” he said. “If we end up with 1,000 videos, we’ll find a way to share them. I’d love to see that kind of number. I think it would be terrific.”

Anyone with questions about the project should email kindness@wiu7.org.