The Sally Jane Kindness Foundation: A Legacy That Lives On

 “A mother’s legacy of kindness and a family’s hope to keep it alive one act of kindness at a time.”

Although the seed of the Sally Jane Kindness Foundation was planted by a high school teacher, Emily Ward’s mother, Sally Jane Stephens, was the genesis.

“A teacher assigned our sophomore class two random acts of kindness to do and then write about them on pieces of paper,” Emily, the founder of The Pear Tree Collective, remembers. When all assignments were in, the teacher linked all the strips of paper together, to demonstrate how each act of kindness builds off of each other. 

“I was really inspired by that assignment,” Emily says. Then, years later with an assignment to write a speech in class at UNC Charlotte, Emily noticed there were many random acts of violence in the news, including at schools, and thought, “What if you could use random acts of kindness to combat random acts of violence?”

Finding found lots of research on how random acts of kindness can create a shift in perspective, Emily started to put her thought into action. What if, for one week, everyone focused on doing random acts of kindness? Could it shift the energy on campus?

“The speech created a fire in my belly,” Emily says, beyond the classroom. She led the charge with presentations on campus, and created a weeklong event called LINKS: Linking the Campus through Kindness. It included an information table in the heart of campus, posters in residence halls, a contest, and easy ideas to perform random acts of kindness. The momentum grew. 

“People donated flowers, gave an apple to a teacher, wrote notes; you could actually feel the difference. I thought, if that was so impactful, what if every year of life there was one week devoted to this, even in elementary schools? Since so many of the perpetrators of violence turned out to have been bullied in their youth, maybe this might shift things for them.”

Due to time constraints and a semester abroad, the LINKS Kindness Week did not continue–yet the impact remained. Even as a senior, two years after the event Emily saw that one of the women who served lunch in the cafeteria had saved a thank-you note a student had made for her during that Kindness Week.

“This was probably someone who had never been thanked for the job she had done before. The power of that one thank-you note really struck me, and you could feel the difference those random notes from classmates made.” This solidified her goals of one day continuing on with an organization supporting and encouraging random acts of kindness.  

Emily had to put away her plans while “dealing with other life things,” she says. But when her oldest child was in elementary school, she started work to file for the 501c3 nonprofit designation, and began LINKS: Linking the Community through Kindness.

“We hosted several events, like passing flowers to people at the Friendly shopping center and a January regift event, where we passed out unused gifts to kids in community parks.”

However, it wasn’t until her mother passed in 2022 that LINKS Kindness Foundation became an official 501c3 and was rebranded to the Sally Jane Kindness Foundation, in honor of her mother Sally.  

“Right now, in addition to our mission to encourage and support random acts of kindness, we are also working on an initiative to provide scholarships for people who need wellness services, and another for service providers to help them get more education.” Helping animals is another subgroup, again in honor of her mom, who loved animals.

Now there is one more piece of Sally Jane’s legacy growing on the Pear Tree property: a tree named after her. See more on Facebook 

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