When living in a time where simply turning on the radio means being hit with a spew of bad news, the Chris Kindness Award organization is changing the narrative. Every month, any Berkeley community member can be nominated to win the award for their acts of kindness. The organization was founded in October 2022 by Alan Ross, who has been a Professor of Law, Ethics, and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, for 36 years.
Ross named the award after his friend, Chris Walton, who dedicated his career to teaching preschool at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay in Berkeley, which Ross’ children attended. “He played the guitar, and was always surrounded by three-year-olds yanking on him …He had a sweetness,” Ross explained. He recalled going to Walton’s memorial and hearing story after story about what a difference he made. Ross asked himself: “Why do we have to wait for a funeral to really talk about how much people mean to us?” And so, the Chris Kindness Award was born.
Some months, the award has received over 100 nominations; Ross narrows it down to three finalists. After that, anyone across the world can vote for the winner, who receives a one thousand dollar prize.
Ross hopes that bringing attention to these Berkeley residents will serve as a call to action for others, motivating them to practice kindness themselves. “One of our previous winners is a retired guy, Bernie. Every Thursday he goes to a children’s hospital to do origami with sick kids,” Ross said, “Maybe people will see that and think, ‘Hey, what can I do?’ That’s the goal, we call it the ripple effect.”
Yasmin Navarro, an October nominee for the Chris Kindness Award, and a Berkeley High School college and career counselor, has been a benefactor of the ripple effect. When she was in high school, her teacher, Ms. Falcon, helped prepare Navarro for college by gathering money from Navarro’s teachers to buy her a laptop and making sure she had a winter coat for Massachusetts.
“I think it (kindness) looks like listening. It looks like supporting them in whatever goals they have,” Navarro said, “I focus specifically on college and career and sometimes students don’t know what they want to do. So it’s about exploring that with them … it’s a lot of listening.”
Last month’s Chris Kindness Award winner, Shannon Houston, is another example of a role model that Ross hopes to spotlight. Houston is a beloved music teacher at Longfellow Middle School, and the founder of the New Apollo Youth Symphony Orchestra (NAYSO).
Houston was nominated for the Chris Kindness award by one of his seventh grade students, Kai Wang. Houston operates under the motto, “If you can play, you can stay,” meaning that he believes any and all students can learn music. Since Wang is blind, Houston learned how to transcribe sheet music into braille so that Wang could fully participate in his music class.
Houston’s efforts to make music education available to everyone extends beyond the classroom. He founded NAYSO with the goal of creating a music program that is accessible to students from families of lower socioeconomic status and students of color. “I wanted to address the monetary barrier, as similar groups cost at least $1,500 per member for a season,” Houston said. The program now costs $300 per member, with scholarships available.
In a world where many people are divided by beliefs, the Chris Kindness Award is a reminder that there are things that unite us, too. As Ross sees it, kindness isn’t owned by a particular party or reserved for extraordinary acts. Sometimes it manifests in people who might otherwise go unnoticed — a music teacher dedicated to fostering every student’s desire to learn, a counselor passionate about helping students chase their dreams, and a retiree who spends his free time making kids in the hospital smile. Both are united by a simple question: In Ross’s words, “What can I do for others?”