Empowering Kindness

Emma (on the right) at her aunt's store, where some of the bracelets are available.

Something happened to 10-year-old Emma Socia of Westland, MI, just a few months ago, that prompted a few changes in the trajectory of her short life. She recounts, "I was on a school bus and this person dumped a chemical on me. It got in my eyes and mouth. I came home and I was crying because I got it in my eyes. It was burning and I was temporarily blinded." Without even realizing it, Emma had just experienced an extreme incidence of bullying.

Now, this soft-spoken young girl has known for quite a while where her life would be headed. Now in sixth grade, she started saving up for an education that was planned to take her to law school, with the possibility of becoming a judge all in the future. As Teri Socia, her mother, reported, "Her and her best friends, since first grade, talked about how they wanted to be lawyers. Now she's talked about wanting to be a judge. She's been saving since first grade to do that and she wants to work for her own city some day. The city has kind of wrapped its arms around her, as well. She had her own tour of city hall, the police department, fire department."



Since the bullying incident, however, Emma has taken it upon herself, with her mom's help, of course, to do something positive about the thing that happened to her. Somewhere along the line, she has found a well of internal strength. There is no room in her life for being a victim; she has become a victor over bullying.

Since the incident, "Empower" has become her nickname. So, when she started a campaign to stop the bullying, she called it EMPOWER KINDNESS. Oh, and there are special colorful bracelets that go along with the campaign. They get passed around and share a message of passing the kindness around. They are reminders to wearers to remember to be kind to those around you. You see, where there is kindness, bullying has a hard time existing.

And the whole kindness campaign has her town of Westland quite enamored of her, too. Sgt. Robert Wilkie of the Westland Police Department expresses his admiration, "It's amazing for a 10-year-old to organize something of this magnitude and put it together. Not only was she thinking of herself, she was thinking of others."

Some photos from Emma's visit to the Westland Fire Department.

In terms of her campaign, she is thinking of the future, there, too. She'd like to organize some rallies to support an end to bullying and then spread the campaign to the surrounding area. Oh, and maybe design some t-shirts to support the cause of empowering more kindness, too. Considering that this kindness campaign has only recently started and come so far in such a short time, the sky's the limit for Emma!

A pile of bracelets to "Empower Kindness".

Thanks to this article from Station WXYZ Detroit: http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/wayne-county/10-year-old-westland-girl-starts-campaign-to-end-bullying-after-traumatic-bullying-incident; and the above link.

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