We want to send you gratitude for being part of our community.
At our celebration, we heard the voices of our AMAZING student peacemakers. We listened as our educators spoke to the deep transformation that happens in a school’s community over years of working with Soul Shoppe. And… we had a ton of fun dancing and winning fantastic prizes!
Just this week, a parent sent a donation with a note about Soul Shoppe’s positive impact on their family and home:
“Our 7yr-old matured in just a few sessions more than he did through most of virtual learning and has taught the methods in our household. Inspiring!”
Yes, we are INSPIRED!
We crunched some numbers… over these 20 years, we’ve supported 7,500 parents and 18,000 teachers to be empathetic adult role models for our next generation.
We have delivered over 48,000 workshops to schools… which for those of you who have seen our work means we have hit the play button on Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” 48,000 times 🙂
We have worked directly with over 560,000 individual kids, some of whom are now grown up… paying taxes, voting, and beginning their careers.
Of course it is our community (you!) who enables us to continue our work. You. Are. Amazing!
We’ve listed a few incredible ways you can take action to help Soul Shoppe launch into the NEXT 20 YEARS of big-hearted school programs.
Donate! We’ve raised $14,750 towards our June 30 goal of $20,000! We are SO close to our goal. If you’d like to help us close the gap with a donation, please click here to support.
Record a short video! Please let us know why you love Soul Shoppe! Record a 30-60 second video about our impact on your life! Click here to record your video!
Connect us to more schools! Maybe your friends’ kid is starting at a new elementary school and you suggest they look into Soul Shoppe. Or… maybe you are at a barbecue and someone mentions they work in the local school district? This is a GREAT opportunity to tell them about Soul Shoppe, and maybe connect us all over email.
Share our content online. We put a lot of work into our newsletter and social media efforts. Please spread the Soul Shoppe love by sending to friends and family! Good goes around when we all pitch in and engage when we are able.
Thank you again for what YOU have done to make our 20 years a success, and the next 20 years a reality!
“The things that make me different are the things that make me.” – Winnie The Pooh
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We’re all different in our own unique ways. We have different appearances, talents, and abilities. We all think, feel, behave, and believe differently. That’s what makes life so interesting!
Sometimes we celebrate these differences. We heap praise on people like Steve Jobs, Serena Williams, and Greta Thunberg who break the mold and challenge the status quo. But sometimes we exclude, judge, or disparage people because we think they aren’t like us.
At Soul Shoppe, we show kids that if we just take the time to look beneath the surface, we’ll find that we have a lot more in common than we think. But how do we learn to really see beyond our outer appearances and get to know someone for what’s inside?
We can play the Same Same Different Game.
Last week, over 350 students joined us to play what we call the Same Same Different Game! How does it work? Well, we asked kids to look at two different people –me and our big-hearted facilitator Arek – and describe the differences and similarities they saw.
They pointed out that I’m a girl and Arek is a boy. They noted that we both have dark hair, though mine’s long and his is short. But our gender and our hair don’t make us who we are! There’s so much more that makes us unique, and these young people know it. They understand how to find the things we all have in common, whether it’s a love of dancing or a distaste for brussel sprouts.
But learning to appreciate and honor our differences takes practice. That’s why we created Respect Differences.
Respect Differences is an online course designed to teach K-6th grade kids how to recognize and appreciate all the things that make us unique. In this on-demand course, kids are guided through lessons that will help them build up their self-esteem so that they can show more empathy toward people with ideas, appearances, likes, and dislikes different from their own.
We show kids how they can play the Same Same Different Game to celebrate differences all the time. Visit our website and learn more. Or, you can click the button below.
Thank you for attending Soul Shoppe’s virtual game show, Kids Say the Smartest Things!
We had a blast sharing superhero trivia and imitating animal sounds, talking about polar bears and playground problems, but more importantly: your kids had a lot of wise insights to share.
They showed us how to navigate tough conversations, how to face overwhelming emotions, how to stand up to peer pressure, and much, much more. All this just goes to show that kids have innate peacemaking and problem solving skills. We adults could probably learn a thing or two!
Thanks to your little ones and their profound kid wisdom, we feel that we have a much brighter future ahead of us.
Now we want to know what you thought of our virtual events this year. Whether you’re a parent, a teacher, or a school administrator, we’d love to hear from you so we can continue to improve our programs to best serve your kids and students.
Simply click the button below to take a very brief survey (only 3 questions!) and give us your feedback.
Soul Shoppe’s virtual holiday celebration – Gifts, Giggles & Goodness – made it an incredible week for us. We hit record numbers of participants with well over 1200 kids joining in over the course of 3 days!
Together we got crafty with homemade holiday gifts, giggled in more ways than we could count, and shared how small acts of kindness can make a big difference. Thanks to all who participated, our days have been a whole lot more joyous and bright.
The Good Goes Around! All it takes is one small act of kindness to turn someone’s day around and light up their face with a smile. Our big-hearted facilitator Ryan taught us to get creative with crazy gifts and how we can practice more kindness to spark joy this season. Our big-hearted facilitator Dara helped us get our giggles out!
Now we want to know what you thought of our virtual events this year. Whether you’re a parent, a teacher, or a school administrator, we’d love to hear from you so we can continue to improve our programs to best serve your kids and students.
Simply click the button below to take a very brief survey (only 3 questions!) and give us your feedback.
Soul Shoppe's work is made possible by donors and partners who care deeply about the young people in their communities! We can't do this work without you. Support our work in classrooms and on playgrounds across the nation by donating here.
