Teens take up Rachel’s Challenge
By Pearl Cantrell
Monitor Staff Writer
CEDAR CREEK LAKE–Can the community and school environment benefit from increasing expressions of kindness and mercy?
Representatives of Rachel’s Challenge say “Yes.”
That’s why they have brought the program to schools and communities across the nation, most recently to Kemp and Mabank.
Budding from the 1999 shooting death of 16-year-old Rachel Joy Scott at Columbine High School, Rachel’s Challenge has grown to reach the most students of any assembly program, bar none.
Derek Kilgore, 22, of Englewood, Colo., presented to the Kemp community the flesh and bones of the program inspired by an ethics essay Rachel wrote on her own “Codes of Life.”
That code is based upon faith and trust in others, along with a response of compassion, especially to those who seem to need it most.
Her father, Darrel, found that essay soon after her death, and made a commitment to carry his daughter’s message to her peers nationwide.
Today, a core group of 35 mostly young people – like family friend Kilgore, who has foregone his own college career – are spreading the word from school to school and heart to heart.
Rachel believed that expressions of kindness, forgiveness, helping and leading would initiate a “chain reaction,” and ultimately impact the world.
Her father, Kilgore and others like them are living out her dreams, goals and ethics.
Kilgore presented five concrete actions to students and community members that would initiate a chain reaction of loving kindness.
These included:
• The Golden Rule. Treat others the same way you would want to be treated.
Because Rachel wanted to be liked and have friends at school, she, in turn, befriended a handicapped student named Adam, who had become so depressed he was contemplating ending his life. Her offer of friendship and sense of being valued as a friend in return gave Adam a whole new lease on life.
• Appreciate everyone, mock no one. Everyone has something good to offer the community, whether at school or at home.
Rachel believed you had to take the time to find the good and appreciate it. Lift it up and encourage it to grow. Rachel believed making fun of someone, mocking them, only tended to belittle and shrink the good inside, so it can hardly grow or express itself in the world.
• Dream big and believe in yourself. Rachel felt big goals brought out the best in people and kept one moving forward.
She set three goals for her life, and wanted others to do the same. Her goals were to impact million of people through her life, create a chain reaction of kindness which would grow globally, and she wanted to become a famous actress.
Kilgore pointed out that by reaching 1.5 million students each school year, she has already achieved two of her goals, and the third was in the works with a movie of her life under production.
Don’t be afraid to dream big. If one girl can achieve her goals even after she has died, what might you accomplish?
• Use positive gossip. Kilgore told how two signers of the Declaration of Independence, future presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, shared an intense animosity.
This was so well-known that the painter of the famous picture “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence” depicted Jefferson as stepping on the toes of Adams under the table.
However, a third signer of the Declaration, Dr. Benjamin Rush (who also happened to be the first abolitionist organizer), saw the good in both men and made it his business to bring these two great men together. He employed positive gossip to do it.
He’d tell Adams that Jefferson thought he was an excellent public speaker. Rush would leave out that Jefferson regretted that Adams didn’t have anything important to say.
Rush would tell Jefferson that Adams admired Jefferson’s keen mind and powers of investigation, but didn’t say that Adams also thought he could put those powers to better use.
As it turned out, the two men became the best of friends, and ended up dying on the same day, exactly 18 years to the day following the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
But had it not been for Rush’s determination to speak good of one to the other in the form of positive gossip, their friendship might never have been realized.
• Lift the discouraged with laughter. Rachel believed that people were made up of many layers (just like ogres, it turned out) and that laughter was one of the best ways to help people release their guard and reveal their truest selves.
Each year, Rachel’s Challenge is taken up by thousands of teens and community leaders, forming Chain Link clubs.
These young people are given initial training, and take it from there into acts of community service and individual responses of kindness in their classrooms and families.
Kilgore closed his presentation with a story about Rachel and her older brother Craig.
They were driving to school together on that fateful day in 1999, and were arguing about what radio station to listen to. Craig said some very harsh things to his sister and when they arrived at school, sprang from the car, slamming the door behind him.
He didn’t know that was the last time he would see his sister alive. That the next time he would see her was when he looked down into her casket.
Craig has resented those angry words ever since, and has wished he could do it all over again.
His story is a warning to others to not let selfishness, pride and competitiveness break down your relationships with those you love. Don’t let angry words be spoken – they may be your last that loved one will ever hear.
Kilgore reported that 200 kids in Kemp Junior High accepted Rachel’s Challenge to make the world a better place by employing these five initiates.
If everyone in and around Cedar Creek Lake were to be so touched by the life story of Rachel Joy Scott, what kind of place might this be?
Think about it.
To learn more about Rachel’s Challenge go on-line to rachelschallenge.org