Father's Day 2014

On this special day, I thought it would be great if we celebrate Father's Day with some inspiring pictures. So I will leave you with this set of photos.. Enjoy and Happy Father's Day to all the DADS out there!!!

By Heidi Shebaro
Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Domestic Violence Caught On Camera

Domestic violence is not a one-way street.

The perception that physical abuse among loved ones is strictly a women's issue is far from reality. In fact, about 40 percent of all victims of domestic violence in the U.K. are men, as this video by the ManKind Initiative points out, citing research by the country's Office of National Statistics. The group provides help and support for male victims of domestic abuse in the U.K.

The video above features a pair of actors portraying a couple fighting aggressively in a London public space. When the man shouts at the woman and begins shoving her, bystanders quickly intervene. However, when the tables are turned and the woman plays the role of the physical aggressor, not a single person gets involved. In fact, several people can be seen smirking or giggling in the background.

The experiment begs the question: Why do we view domestic violence against men as less serious -- and sometimes even humorous -- when, according to the American Medical Association, male victims feel guilt, shame, depression and withdrawal from relationships, just like women do?

The video promoted a #ViolenceIsViolence hashtag on Twitter, and users voiced their support for building awareness for the issue.

Similar statistics exist in the U.S., where roughly one in seven men aged 18 and olderhave reported being the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that number remains higher for American women -- one in four -- the prevalence of abuse against men may be surprising.

Domestic abuse affects certain demographics at startlingly disproportionate rates. For example, about two in five gay and bisexual American men have reported experiencing domestic violence -- a figure on par with heterosexual women. Homeless women and women with disabilities also report staggeringly high rates of domestic abuse.

Mark Brooks, ManKind chairman, said recent events in pop culture -- specifically Jay Z and Solange Knowles' infamous elevator dispute after the Met Gala in New York City -- pushed him to create the video.

"The reaction to the Jay Z and Solange lift incident exposed the stark double standardstowards violence against men and women in society," he told HuffPost UK. "After the attack, the question trending on social media was, 'What did Jay Z say to Solange?' If it was the other way around and Jay Z had attacked Solange, people would have been asking very different questions."

"The Kindness project in the Middle east"

Father's Day Challenge

Father’s Day is almost here, and I put together some acts of kindness I am planning to do in honor of my father whom I cherish and love.

1. Say “Good morning” to a stranger father.

2. Offer to pick up groceries for a neighbor father in need.

3. Write a thoughtful letter of recommendation for a father I know.

4. Bring a box of doughnuts to share with a father at the office.

5. Hold the door open for a father with a stroller.

6. Offer baby sitting services to a father who could use a break.

7. Give a good book to a father.

8. Call or write to a teacher father who changed my life.

9. Offer my seat to an elderly or disabled father.

10. Write a note to the boss of a colleague father and explain how great a job that person is doing.

11. Throw away my trash—and a father’s—after a movie, picnic or visit to a park.

12. Volunteer to take care of a father’s pet (or pick up the mail/water the plants) while he is vacationing.

By Heidi Shebaro
Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Baby Falls From Second-Story Window In China, Caught By 2 Men (VIDEO)

It's hard not to hold your breath while watching this video of two men in southern China desperately reaching out to save a 1-year-old baby who's about to fall from a second-story window.

The child climbed onto a window ledge during a thunderstorm, said a vendor who lives across from the building in Guangdong Province, according to Euronews.

Two men, identified only as Mr. Li and Mr. Hu, noticed the baby and rushed beneath the window, hoping to catch him. Other residents also brought items that could help break the fall, including cardboard and what appears to be an ottoman.

Fortunately, the items weren't needed.

"I didn't think too much at the time. I was just afraid of failing to catch him. Some people put down cardboard to avoid serious injuries to the baby if I fail to catch him," Li was quoted as saying by China's CCTV.

"It was nothing but human instinct to do so," Hu said.

The baby was uninjured in the fall and reunited with his mom.

 "The Kindness Project in the Middle East"

Dads in the eyes of their children

To show fathers just how loved they are, Shutterfly's greeting card creator, Treat, asked kids what makes their dads special and compiled their responses in the video shown below. Watch it and enjoy!

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” – Sigmund Freud

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Our Biases When 'Homeless' Man And 'Businessman' Collapse In Street

If you saw a person collapse on the street, what would you do?

YouTuber NorniTube decided to take to the streets of Paris to test how pedestrians would react if he collapsed, and what role his appearance would play.

Would people help him if he collapsed wearing a suit? What if he were dressed as a homeless man?

As you might have guessed, not one person helped when he was made to look homeless in this social experiment. Some passers-by looked slightly concerned, others nonchalantly walked past. No one stopped -- even when he called out. When he's dressed in a suit and falls in exactly the same way in the same location, however, reactions are stunningly different. 

"I've never been so sad and shocked while filming as I was for this experience," says the video creator. "I hope this video will make you want to help anyone regardless of their appearance."

Watch the video here:

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Inspiring stories for Father's Day

In honor of fathers everywhere.. fathers who sacrifice, fathers who care and love, I gathered real-life inspiring stories about all kinds of fathers - from a security guard to the everyday heroes on whom we depend for strength, support and encouragement.

Different stories told by fathers themselves or the children who love them, but one thing remains common: no matter how difficult things may be, no matter how hard times may get, you can always count on a dad.

So to dads everywhere we say, Happy Father’s Day!

Alexandra G: When I was 7 years old, my class had a father's day where all the dads came with their kids. I had to explain to everyone that my dad had passed away just a couple of months before. Soon after, the door opened and my uncle was standing there and said "sorry I'm late". He was my dad for the day. He took a 4 hour flight for me.

Lexi: Upon entering the Magic Kingdom, one of the security guards said to Alli ‘Excuse me Princess, can I have your autograph.’ I could see that the book was filled with children’s scribbles as the guard asked the same question of many little Princesses. Alli could not get over the fact that the guard thought she was a real princess.

Jackie: A student at Mango Elementary gave the police officer patrolling her school this note after the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Jay: I took the afternoon off to make the trek to campus and back, a six-hour round trip slogging through the towns dotting Highway 47. I felt this sudden urge to cheer my son on although I was behind on work. I understood that day that the most important thing I could do for my children—just be there, even if it meant going the extra mile, the way my dad did for me, cheering me on.

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me." - Jim Valvano

By Heidi Shebaro 
Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Cartoon Characters Shave Their Heads To Show Kids With Cancer That Bald Is Beautiful

Snoopy never looked so cool.

The Peanuts' pooch and other animated characters shaved their heads to show kids who have lost hair to chemotherapy that they are not alone.

The solidarity haircuts emerged from a partnership with the Brazilian cancer charity and hospital operator, GRAACC, as part of a cancer awareness drive in Brazil. Garfield, Olive Oyl and characters from "Adventure Time" and "Rio 2" also sheared their locks for the project.

"I think it will be more normal to see a bald child because everyone will see on TV," a young girl says after watching the cartoons in a moving video about the project. In another interview, a boy says that he will no longer be ashamed to take off his hat.

"Famous cartoons from all over the world have gone bald, sending out the message that a child with cancer deserves to be seen just like any other child," the Bald Cartoons homepage states.

A few characters appeared with their heads shaved last November, but the campaign was expanded to include 40 characters for a cancer awareness week, Ogilvy Brasil, the agency behind the campaign, wrote in a release.

"We want to reduce all prejudice around the disease," the agency's Roberto Fernandez said.

"The Kindness Project in the Middle East"

People Disguised As Homeless Ignored By Loved Ones On Street In Stunning Social Experiment

If a family member posed as a homeless person, would you recognize him or her?

That's the question a new campaign -- Make Them Visible -- is asking. In a video produced by ad agency Silver + Partners and Smuggler for the New York City Rescue Mission, several people come face-to-face with their relatives and significant others dressed as homeless people. However, not a single participant recognizes their mother, brother or wife.

"There’s only one person that didn’t make it into the film -- because they couldn’t handle the fact that they walked by their family," video director Jun Diaz of Smuggler production company told Fast Company. "It happened every time."

The jarring social experiment, staged in Tribeca and Soho near the mission's shelter, shows just how invisible homeless people are to pedestrians on the street.

"We don't look at them. We don't take a second look," Michelle Tolson, director of public relations for the New York City Rescue Mission, told The Huffington Post.

Tolson explained that the ad agency and production company hired actors for a documentary video and quietly contacted each person's family to see if they would be interested in being apart of the social experiment. While the family members were in on the ruse, the participants had no idea they were being set up, and only learned after the fact when they watched themselves walk past their "homeless" family member.

"The experiment is a powerful reminder that the homeless are people, just like us, with one exception," Craig Mayes, executive director of New York City Rescue Mission, said in a statement provided to HuffPost. "They are in trouble and in pain. And they are someone's uncle or cousin or wife."

Watch how each person reacts after the big reveal in Make Them Visible's video below.

"The Kindness Project in the Middle East"

What happens when an Elephant looks in the mirror?!

Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining only humans, apes and dolphins as animals that possess this kind of self-awareness, researchers now report.

"This would seem to be a trait common to and independently evolved by animals with large, complex brains, complex social lives and known capacities for empathy and altruism, even though the animals all have very different kinds of brains," researcher Diana Reiss, a senior cognitive research scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in Brooklyn, N.Y., told LiveScience.

Hopefully, she added, this will encourage people to protect elephants.

Take a look at the following clip from “Through The Wormhole” and you’ll see what I mean! Please SHARE with others!

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Support pours in for mom accused of leaving kids in hot car

Her tears have struck a chord.

More than $100,000 has been pledged to help a single mother from Arizona who was arrested last month after allegedly leaving her 2-year-old and 6-month-old sons alone in a hot car while she went on a job interview because she was unable to find a babysitter.

The mother, Shanesha Taylor, 35, was charged with two counts of child abuse. She has pleaded not guilty and was released on bail posted by a stranger, her lawyer told TODAY.com Wednesday. Her two boys are now in state care. 

Her tearful mug shot has brought attention to issues facing the nation’s poor and unemployed, especially single mothers.

Amanda Bishop, a New Jersey woman who does not know Taylor, felt compelled to help. She launched an online fundraising campaign in support of Taylor, with pledges now totaling more than $102,000.

“There are some of us that feel that Shanesha was in an unfortunate situation that sadly an economy like ours is putting many single mothers in a position to make terrible mistakes like this,” the fundraising site says.

Bishop, 24, told MSNBC's Tamron Hall that she launched the fundraising campaign after viewing Taylor’s Facebook page and finding nothing but posts and pictures featuring Taylor’s kids. “That convinced me she wasn’t a bad mom, she just made a terrible mistake,” Bishop said.

She faces a maximum penalty of more than 8 years in prison, according to her lawyer, Benjamin Taylor, who is not related.

“This is a single mom who was trying to get a job, and unfortunately she was arrested for trying to get a job,” he said, adding that he plans to meet with prosecutors on Friday. “She wasn’t going to a liquor store. She wasn’t going to a party. She was going to a job interview.”

“This is a case where you have a single mom who’s doing her best, who’s trying to survive out here in the world,” he said, adding that it was her first criminal offense.

On Tuesday, he gave prosecutors more than 12,000 signatures on a petition supporting the desperate mom and also relayed her thanks by reading out loud a letter she wrote.

"The love, compassion and support of those of you around the world are nothing less than phenomenal,” her lawyer said. “I read all of your cards, emails and letters. They keep my spirits up. And your prayers brighten my darkest days. I read a message the other day that reminded me … it takes a village to raise a child. Thank you all for being my village."

"The Kindness Project in the Middle East"

5 things I learned from kind people

In my 30 plus years on this planet, I met lot of people from different background and diverse religions, ethnicity, color, etc. And from those thousands hundreds that passed throughout my life, there were the deluded kind ones that had self-interested politeness, calculated generosity and superficial etiquette. There were the kind people who pretend to care for someone all the while repressing anger or contempt; hiding rage or frustration behind false pleasantries. And lastly, there were the simply nice people, selfless and waiting nothing in return for their kindness.

5 things I learned from the selfless kind people I encountered in my life:

1. Be kind to myself. In order to be kind to others, I had to focus on being kind to myself and having the ability to know myself better. Because when the basic of a building is not solid enough, the building will eventually fall apart. Same thing applies for kindness: when you are not kind to yourself, your kindness to others risks falling and you become deluded self-interested and superficial person.

2. Be happy,  joyful, and grateful. People living in the Middle East - precisely - experienced lot of cruelty, challenges and despair, but they - continuously - restored their sense of faith in humanity. I learned to maintain an optimistic attitude and do acts of kindness with genuine joy and cheerfulness rather than with reluctance or out of a sense of duty or service.

3. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle". I learned that it's so easy to forget about other people's feelings and battles. Therefore, I needed to think before committing any act or saying any word, and calculate the impact it has on others. 

4. Expand my circle of kindness. It can be very easy to be kind to family and friends or people from same background and same country. I learned not to do selective kindness, and be kind to everyone: the sick, the poor, the vulnerable, the rich, the ones who have everything, the ones I dislike etc.

5. Expect nothing in return. Princess Diana said: “Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” I learned that practicing a random acts of kindness is contagious and when I carry out one act of kindness, someone might be kind to me someday. And that's when I decided to start "The Kindness Project in the Middle East" and spread kindness everywhere. 

And now I just want to be the kind of person that kind people like and want to be like.

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

'My best friend took a knife for me'

Two teens who helped treat friends wounded in a massive school stabbing at their Pennsylvania high school said they remain stunned Thursday by the rampage they witnessed.

“I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night because I’m so traumatized,” Gracey Evans told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie.

The 17-year-old junior watched as a classmate began stabbing people around her in the halls of their suburban Pittsburgh school just moments before class started Wednesday. Evans said her best friend jumped in front of her right as the stabbing suspect approached.

“I was just so scared and I didn’t know what to do. All I could really think about was, did this just really happen?” Evans said, “Like, I couldn’t believe that my best friend just took a knife for me. I could tell you exactly how much blood was on that knife. It’s just too scary.”

Authorities have taken 16-year-old Alex Hribal into custody for the attack. They say the teen stabbed 20 fellow students and a security guard at Franklin Regional Senior High School before he was apprehended.

Kristen Beard, 16, lived down the street from Hribal but said the two didn’t interact much.
“He was always very quiet and I would have never expected anything from him like this,” she told Guthrie. “He was just quiet.”

Beard witnessed her prom date get stabbed in the attack. She helped pull him into a nearby classroom for safety and attended to his wounds while keeping him as calm as possible until help arrived.

“I was just holding his hand and rubbing his hand and trying to assure him it was going to be okay, and that we were going to prom and that he was going to be okay,” she said.
Beard was in the same room as Evans, who was applying pressure on a gaping wound of a seriously injured classmate.
“I actually had no idea how to do any of that. I just had a gut feeling that it wasn’t right for him to sit up and that he needed his airway cleared so I sat him down,” Beard said. “I said I needed to put pressure on the wounds so I got paper towels and I put pressure on the wound.”

She said the boy then started vomiting but an emergency medic had entered the room by then and asked her to move.

Authorities say Hribal will be charged as an adult. He faces four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of aggravated assault. His attorney, Pat Thomassey, said Hribal needs to be seen by a psychiatrist to determine whether the teen is mentally fit to stand trial.

“This is a nice young man. He’s never been in trouble,” Thomassey said. “He’s not a loner. He works well with other kids at school.”

The boy's father, Harold Hribal, made a short statement outside of his home to reporters Wednesday.

"My prayers go out to everyone who was injured today and I hope they recover as quickly as possible," he said.

It's not clear yet if Hribal suffered from bullying or no, but school violence is becoming outrageous, and we have to remind our students of kindness, of tolerance and understanding, and demonstrates how we must be willing to give in order to receive, whilst fostering the good values that helps build the self esteem, respect, compassion, generosity, commitment, resilience, honesty, confidence, love, gratitude and sense of belonging that helps avoid the “it’s all about me” virus and destructive mindset that can manifest in teenage years.

To become a KP School, please email us at: mea.kindness@gmail.com

By Heidi Shebaro

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and

a blogger

This 3 Minute Video Made Me Cry, And I Never Cry. Must See For Everyone

This is really worthwhile to watch for everyone, and I hope that you SHARE it after watching. The message in this video is extremely powerful. If only more people acted this way, the world would be a much better place. 

What are you waiting for? Do an act of kindness today!

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger

Fuck the Poor!

A must see video about a man who walks the streets of London shouting #FuckThePoor, a social experiment to see whether we really do care about those less fortunate. And see what happens when he says "Help the Poor"...

By Heidi Shebaro 

Founder of "The Kindness Project in the Middle East", a teacher and a blogger