09/20/18

College Gardens Elementary is the kind of school where children are exposed to diversity at a young age, where students interact with children, whose families come from more than 40 different countries.

College Gardens is an amazing school and we have some fantastic kids, but not one person in this school is perfect, and so for us, to continue to learn and grow and accept one another is something that we continually work and strive towards.

No Place For Hate starts with student-led committees. Guided by teachers and parents, the committee's think of ways to promote kindness, from paying a compliment, opening a door for someone, to making sure no one eats lunch alone.

I wanted to help kids around the world that are being bullied because no one should feel they are not liked enough. The Anti-Defamation League started the initiative in 1999 after the shooting massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Today the program is active at more than 1,700 US schools. Here in the Washington DC area, we launched No Place for Hate in 2016

as a response to the growing sort of climate in our schools of really divisive rhetoric from political campaigns and throughout our country seeping into the halls of our schools.

Some students have found inspiration in young activists such as Hana Kaur Mangat. At 12, she co-founded the Sikh Kid 2 Kid youth organization

after six worshippers at a Sikh temple were shot by white supremacists in Wisconsin. We pick up things from our environment regardless of whether it's explicitly said to us or not,

and I think that right now we're not being taught enough that hate is not okay. The initiative is also seen as a way to prevent the loneliness and anxiety

that can contribute to mental health problems and potentially to tragedies such as school shootings. We all want to connect with someone and so part of this work is despite how we may look in terms of our differences