Fighting hatred with kindness: Breakfast spotlighting altruism opens SevenDays events

Kindness was once again the mantra when this year’s events for SevenDays launched April 5. Creating “ripples of kindness” is the goal of the nonprofit, which kicked off its slate of activities at a breakfast held at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.

It’s been eight years since Mindy Corporon started the annual event in memory of her son, Reat Underwood, her father, William Corporon, and Terri LaManno, the third victim of the 2014 shootings at the Jewish Community Campus and Village Shalom. A white supremacist, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., was convicted in the shooting deaths of the three.

Rewarding those who have made a significant effort to give back and help others was the focus of the breakfast. Lisa Ginter, CEO of CommunityAmerica Credit Union, accepted the Ripple of Kindness award.

Ginter has helped organize donation events for local non-profits such as Operation Breakthrough, the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City and Children’s Mercy Hospital. She has also been a leader at organizations like the Kansas City Area Development Council and the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

She recalled the lessons in kindness she learned from her mother, who always asked about what she and her nine siblings were doing to make people feel like part of their group at school.

“It was more about how we included people in our circle,” Ginter said. Her mother’s rationale for that, she told her children, was that “one act of kindness could have a profound impact in that young person’s life at that point in time and change the trajectory of where that individual would go.”

She said she hopes she has passed down that lesson to her own children. She believes SevenDays is setting that example.

Former Chiefs quarterback Trent Green, who won the same award two years ago, presented the award. Green was filling in for last year’s winner, Dayton Moore, who sent a video message but couldn’t attend the ceremony due to obligations with the Texas Rangers baseball team.

A key component of SevenDays is getting young people involved in spreading kindness. To that end, the group sponsored a button art contest where students from all over the metro made designs they felt fit one of the eight keywords specified by SevenDays.

Three of the button contest winners came from Johnson County: Brenna Chism, of Olathe North; Kate Klein, of Olathe Northwest; and Audrey Hart, of Blue Valley.

Other winners were Sydney Bohachick, of Winnetonka High School; Chloe Christensen, of Lee’s Summit North High School; Natalie Goldman and Claire Joseph, of Blue Valley High School; and Jackson Rees, of Blue Southwest Valley High School.

Johnson County High school seniors Natalie Goldman and Claire Joseph, of Blue Valley, and Jackson Rees, of Blue Valley Southwest, received $1,000 scholarships for their projects.

Jake Goldman got involved with SevenDays right at the start in 2015 when he was a teenager at Blue Valley North.

“My work with SevenDays as a high school student has been one of those formative experiences shaping my trajectory,” he said.

It inspired him to embrace volunteering with young people when he went off to college, and again later to establish multiple start-ups to help people with things like using food stamps online. He’s also worked to help those with opioid addiction.

Now as an adult, he’s on the organization’s board, offering his perspective to help guide their activities.

“SevenDays taught me to engage in dialogue, especially with wrongly stigmatized groups, like the addiction community,” Goldman said.

Corporon detailed how the she and others have helped spread the idea of Kindness Clubs and events like the Kindness Walk to several locations outside of Kansas City, such as Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, New York and Texas.

She continues to encourage people to consider the way they treat others and vice versa.

“Think for a minute: Who stands next to you when you have challenges? Who lifts you when you’re in your darkest time? Who sent you a card that said, ‘I’m thinking about you’? And in turn, do that for someone else,” Corporon said.

If you want to participate with SevenDays, still on the slate is the 1.5-mile Kindness Walk that starts at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 16 at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood. Entry is $36, and you can sign up at sevendays.org/events/2023-kindness-walk.