The club formerly known as Cats Against Conflict has recently been renamed Random Acts of Kindness, and students part of the club have been working to spread their message about positivity and compassion throughout Libertyville High School.
A few years ago, Random Acts of Kindness was known as Peer Mediators. Through this club, any student from LHS could request to have a mediation session with two trained leaders from the club about any conflicts they faced. As mediation requests became more and more sparse, the club changed their name to Cats Against Conflict, where they set up an email hotline, so kids facing conflict could request help. They also began to spread positivity around LHS by putting post-its on lockers with kind messages.
“Most recently, the club decided that [since they] had been promoting peaceful things [such as] messages on lockers [and] stickers on the hot chocolate with kindness messages, that they wanted to change the name to Random Acts of Kindness club,” Mrs. Sarah Kelly, sponsor of Random Acts of Kindness, stated.
According to junior and member of Random Acts of Kindness, Olivia Devin, the club changed its name for two main reasons.
“We wanted to get more people involved. Also, we wanted people to know what it was about,” Devin expressed. “R.A.K. was more representative of what we do instead of Cats Against Conflict, and we hoped that more people would want to be a part of it.”
According to Devin, since changing their name and having a segment on Wakeup Wildcats, Random Acts of Kindness has gone from having about four constant members to having 20 show up on a biweekly basis.
Random Acts of Kindness meets every other Tuesday at 2:55 in room 1114. At an average meeting, it will start with Mrs. Kelly talking about the agenda and what she wants to get done that day. This could be creating posters for publicity, sharing ideas for potential projects or planning events.
Since the club no longer deals with conflict between students, they now work towards spreading warm-hearted and affectionate feelings throughout the school.
In the past, students who were part of Random Acts of Kindness have put stickers on the hot chocolate Friday cups saying positive messages such as, “hot chocolate is like a hug from inside.” They also taped notes to people’s lockers during anti-bullying week in October that had short quotes such as, “be a buddy not a bully,” and were able to present to Link Crew about the importance of communication and how things can easily be miscommunicated.
As a kickoff to their new name, Random Acts of Kindness held an after-school event on Valentine’s Day, where they made valentine cards to send to a local nursing home, along with friendship bracelets. Currently, students part of Random Acts of Kindness are planning a community service event, where they will get volunteers to attend a nursing home, and they are also working to possibly get stress-relief puppies for students to play with after school.
“I like [Random Acts of Kindness] because I like the message that it spreads to the school and it’s also really welcoming and everyone there is super just nice….everyone kind of takes everyone’s ideas into consideration when we’re trying to figure out what we want do,” Devin stated. “It’s really just welcoming and fun to be a part of!”
