0

Dear World-Changing Kids,

We need your help!

There are some kids in Cross Lake, Manitoba who need to know that they are loved.

Recently, there have been a lot of deaths in this small community and everyone is really sad.

We can help by sending each child a Kindness Card to make their day a bit brighter.

There are 500 kids in elementary school in Cross Lake, so we want to make 500 Kindness Cards to send up to them from our World-Changing Kids community.

If you are able to help, can you please take a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper, fold it in half and draw a happy picture on the front cover? Then you need to write a nice message on the inside. Your card could say something like:

“Dear Friend,

I hope that you enjoy this Kindness Card. I hope that it makes your day a bit brighter. I want you to know that I am thinking about you and hope that things get better soon.

Love,
(Child’s name),
(Child’s age),
(City)”

I will be collecting these cards over the next two weeks. We need to have them ready for April 4th, when they will be brought to the Ladies Who Lunch event to be packed and shipped up to Cross Lake.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or more ideas about this. And let me know when you have some cards ready to drop off and I will send you my address. You can comment here or send me an email at worldchangingkids@gmail.com.

Also, I will be sharing more ways that we can help and get involved in this situation. Catherine Landry, Founder of Ladies Who Lunch, has started the hashtag ‪#‎motherlove‬ for all initiatives related to helping the Cross Lake community. You can check in with that for regular updates.

Thanks,

Lindsey
Founder
World-Changing Kids

P.S. Some additional notes for the Parents of our fantastic World-Changing Kids …

(1) Here is the link with some details on the situation in Cross Lake:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/manitoba-first-nation-declares-state-of-emergency-over-suicide-epidemic-1.2810573

I know that talking to your kids about suicide can be hard. I try to talk openly with my kids about this whenever it comes up, which is surprisingly often. I will share with you a few points that I try to cover during these conversations, in case it helps you get a conversation started with your kids … and let me know if you have anything else to add to this – I would love to have more ideas.

Things I say to my kids about suicide – which I think are appropriate for kids under 10:

• I don’t have any definitive answer as to why someone commits suicide, the reasons are probably different for everyone. (I think it is important to let kids know that you don’t have all the answers, but you are willing to discuss these types of issues, and try to learn more about them together).

• I imagine a few things that could contribute to someone committing suicide include a feeling of hopelessness, not really knowing how you matter to the world – how you make it a better place, not being able to see a point in the future where you will feel better.

• Maybe the person feels that everyone would be better off if they didn’t exist. They probably feel really, really sad a lot of the time.

As is part of my World-Changing Kids’ philosophy, when I present a real life situation to my kids like the current situation in Cross Lake, I always also present a way that we can help to make things better. I believe this helps reduce anxiety about an upsetting situation and teaches the children that they do have the power to help, to make the world a better place.

So this is where I would say that we are going to help by making these Kindness Cards. We are going to send them up to the kids in Cross Lake so that they know that there is a community of kids in Ottawa who care about them.

(2) Here is the link to more details on the April 4 Ladies Who Lunch event:

https://ers.snapuptickets.com/ers/online-registration-conference.cfm?y=ZWlkPTE2MzQmbGFuPWVuZw%3D%3D