Bullied NY woman sets up anti-bullying foundation
[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: none; border-radius: 0.3846em 0.3846em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Bullied NY woman sets up anti-bullying foundation[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3846em 0.3846em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]GREECE, N.Y. — The former upstate New York school bus monitor whose videotaped bullying by students spurred more than $700,000 in donations to her is using some of the funds to start her own anti-bullying foundation.
Very short article, so I only excerpted the opening paragraph. Click the link to read more!
The world is full of fabulously unexpected turns of fate, my friends: An elderly schoolbus monitor is cruelly berated and the taunts, some of them so cruel as to involve her son who committed suicide, are captured on film. Thousands, then millions watch her bear the abuse until she breaks down in tears. And every person watching remembers the tears they had to wipe away when the bullies came for them.
In a whole 'nother part of the country, one man sees the video and is driven to do something- but what? In this new age of crowdsourcing and kickstarter, he sets up an account where people can send the woman donations. Hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then almost a million dollars of donations flood in from all over the country and the world. The woman turns around and takes some of that money to help fund a foundation to stop bullying.
You might think the story ends there but, of course, it's now the prologue to something greater.
And all of this...distilled from the cruel taunts of schoolchildren!
The modern parable here extends passed the elements of the story: It's about never underestimating the power that you, alone, have to change the world with a single decent act, a defense of an innocent, a goodness shared. None of us know the real impact of our kindness and compassion. We might think them little things, insignificant against the bigger evils of the world.
But it goes the other way, too: Collectively, the little acts of kindness and compassion you and I commit today can and do ripple out, harmonize, and help make our world a better place.
We should all remember that.
PB
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