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County residents spread cheer next week
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Calaveras County schools, government and volunteers are gearing up to celebrate Kindness Week Feb. 13 through 19. The celebration launched in 1994 by the Bergantz family of Murphys continues to inspire good deeds each year. “I hope they’ll get out to the public like they did last year,” Bergantz said. Students wear the ribbons throughout the week and pass them on to others, signing the back, when they see them do something nice for someone else. “It could be letting someone go first in line. It could be listening intently,” Bergantz said. “It doesn’t have to be something huge.” His ideal vision for the project includes ribbons with “so many signatures that you couldn’t read the writing” at week’s end, he said. Bergantz also hopes to see the celebration extend beyond the county lines. “We want the … idea not to be exclusive to Calaveras County or Angels Camp,” he said. “I want people to stumble on it, find it and say, ‘That’s cool. I want to do that.’ ” Ribbons have been known to leave the county in the past and Bergantz hopes to see it happen more in the future. His wife Judy received one from a tourist four years ago while working at a shop in Columbia. Supporters of the Kindness Week effort will speak Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors meeting in support of a resolution officially proclaiming the event throughout the county. The Angels Camp City Council will get into the act at their next meeting on Feb. 21, which will take place at the Bret Harte High School multipurpose room so “Kindness Hero” essays can be read as presented by Mark Twain Elementary School. The master of ceremonies that night is Bergantz’s daughter Jill, 24. She and sister Jane, 21, a student at Azusa Pacific University, “grew up in the tradition of trying to do random acts of kindness,” Bergantz said. The Mark Twain Union Elementary School District is timing the official launch of the internationally recognized Olweus Bullying Prevention Program at its campuses in Angels Camp and Copperopolis. “We thought this would be a perfect time,” said district superintendent and Copperopolis Elementary School principal Julia Tidball. The program team includes Angels Camp Police school resource officer Jim McKeon and staff members have undergone training sessions with California State University, Stanislaus professor Emily Branscum. Assemblies next week will introduce the project and follow-up will include weekly classroom meetings and an annual survey on the topic, Tidball said. Bergantz said fundraising to cover costs of the program has been slow this year and a target of $2,700 has been set. Checks can be made out to the Calaveras County Office of Education with a notation that it is for the “Kindness Fund,” and sent to Seeds of Kindness, c/o Jim Bergantz, P.O. Box 677, Murphys, CA 95247. www.theseedsofkindness.com to help the program grow. |
