Maine 6th grader recognized for spreading kindness

PRINCETON, Maine (WABI) - After the tragedy at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school, a sixth grader at Princeton Elementary School in Maine wanted to find a way to spread kindness at her school.

Victoria Polk was honored in front of her classmates during an assembly after sending a message two days after the Uvalde shooting to youuplift.com, an anonymous positive messaging program for schools across the country.

Princeton previously had this program, but after the pandemic, they stopped using it.

Polk remembered how the positive messages helped her, so she reached out to the company to bring it back to her school.

The founder of the program, Doug Reavis, was so moved by her message, he decided to make YouUplift free for all schools to use.

Reavis and Polk both say this will help change lives for many students.

”She was saying stuff about how we might save people’s lives. I didn’t know how extensive that could get. They do. Hey, there’s calm compliments flying around. The things about good people. Would there be less people just start shooting people? Like innocent kids, they don’t need that. They don’t,” said Polk.

“She wrote that message. And to do that, because she wanted to do that for her school. That’s how she was responding. It was what we did. We got a little emotional and it just it went, that’s when we sat down as a family and we said, look, this little girl is responding like this. This is what she wants done. There has to be other kids out there who maybe would like to process this the same way,” said Doug Reavis, founder.

You can sign your school up for the “Kindness Wall” at youuplift.com.

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