Attorney Dev Sethi of Kinerk, Schmidt & Sethi PLLC, has worked with Tucson's Ben's Bells Project Dev noticed the impact the program had on his two young children and their friends. Dev's kids are in an elementary school that participates in Ben's Bells' Kind Kids Program. Kind Kids provides over 100 area schools with an organic curriculum that allows children to develop and practice kindness. The result is that intentional kindness becomes the new model. Ostracizing behavior, so much the hallmark of so many of our middle school days, becomes the outlier. And students grow up wanting to be kind to one another.

While anecdotal evidence has long existed that being kind has its benefits, new research being conducted at Stanford University and right here at the University of Arizona is demonstrating, through objective data analysis and long-term studies, that kindness has real, measureable benefits.

While best known for its iconic, beautiful handmade (and community made) chimes, Ben's Bells is hard at work helping to create a new expectation of kindness and respect. And hard at work giving folks real world experience and tools to help them practice being kind.

In the wake of Tucson's tragic January 8^th shootings, Ben's Bells provided a great sense of healing and support to the entire community. After the school shooting in Newtown, CT, members of the Newtown community, with connections to Tucson, began reaching out to Ben's Bells and asking for its involvement. The result was a wonderful, quiet trip made by Ben's Bells to Newtown on January 8, 2013. 1,000 bells were hung around the town and the impact has been incredible. You can read stories here:

Tucson reporter Jennifer Waddell, of KGUN9, travelled with the Ben's Bells team on the condition that her reporting would be respectful and unobtrusive. She certainly lived up to that promise, and you can read about the experience here

Watch the video: http://www.kgun9.com/news/local/186522121.html from the KGUN folks who were so touched by the experience that they prepared this video "Thank You"