Prescott-based non-profit organization strives to teach emotional intelligence to children—and bring positivity to the entire community
By Katie Chatham
Kara Peterson has made it her personal mission to combat some of the negativity in today’s world. As the visionary behind Kind Defined, a local non-profit offering children’s workshops on kindness and emotional intelligence, she has taken a personal oath to bring kindness and positivity into our community.
Kara’s mission began to develop when she found herself truly distraught about the many things going on in our world that are just simply not good. She spent some time and listed them out. What was born out of that dark time was Kind Defined, a bright light and a vision to cast into our community.
Kara came together with a group of likeminded individuals and together they developed Kind Defined. They came to the conclusion that if they wanted to change the way people operate, it had to start small – local – and it had to start with the young people in the community.
“Kids aged seven to ten are at the age where they care about what’s equal and fair,” Kara said. “They are concerned about others’ emotions.”
Kind Defined keys in on teaching emotional intelligence to children.
“We do one thing,” Kara said, “and we want to do it well. We want to be able to further that by feeding field trips into school programs and doing large-scale acts of kindness.”
She said Kind Defined has begun a movement that has gotten several other organizations excited about what it looks like to teach kindness to our youth. Members of Kind Defined hope to partner with several other local youth organizations to reach a greater number of children.
Kind Defined will host several events in the near future:
- June 8 at the Prescott Gateway Mall Kind Defined will host a Kindness Craze fundraiser, open to kids ages five to 18. People can pledge acts of kindness; they will “do and think kind” for two weeks, choose the ways they’ll do this, and commit to one act of service.
- In November, in partnership with Kind Defined, Findlay Subaru will host a Festival of Trees to perpetuate kindness as a movement amongst children.
If you would like more information on Kind Defined or to learn more about upcoming events, please reach out to Kara at [email protected] or 928.582.1012.