A $500 prize from a school speech contest led a Texas teenager to launch a toy drive for children at a local hospitalOrion Jean,15, is the founder of Race to Kindness, a youth-led initiative that encourages people to identify needs around them and respond through practical acts of service. He was named TIME’s 2021 Kid of the Year and has gone on to become an author and public speaker.The idea began in 2020, when Jean took part in a national kindness speech contest. In his speech, he argued that kindness was something anyone could practise and that people could choose to act rather than wait for someone else to make a difference.Jean told Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), a non-profit children’s literacy organization in the United States, that winning the contest became the “catalyst” for something much bigger. He used the $500 prize as seed money for his first project, Race to 500 Toys.With help from his community, Jean collected more than 600 toys for a local hospital, according to his account of the initiative.
From toys to meals
The first campaign was followed by a much larger effort to address food insecurity.Jean launched the Race to 100,000 Meals with the support of volunteers, corporate donors and a local nonprofit organisation. The campaign collected more than 100,000 meals for families facing food insecurity in Texas, he said in an interview with RIF.The scale of the projects changed, but Jean said the basic idea remained the same: identify a problem and find people willing to help address it.That approach eventually led him to focus on children’s access to books.Jean has described reading as a major influence on how he understands other people and the world around him. In the interview, he said books allow him to experience different cultures and perspectives and “walk in someone else’s shoes”.His next campaign, Race to 500,000 Books, eventually exceeded its target. As per RIF, the initiative resulted in more than half a million books being donated to school districts, nonprofits and children through Race to Kindness free book fairs held across the US.Jean has said he wants children to have the same access to books that he had growing up.
Why books became the next target
For Jean, the book campaign was not simply about putting more books into children’s hands. He connected access to reading with a child’s ability to learn, explore different perspectives and develop a broader understanding of the world.Jean said his own interest in reading helped shape many of his experiences. He argued that every child should have access to books.The campaign also involved RIF, Jean later partnered with the organisation for reading events, including a nationwide Read Across America Day programme.His work with books has become one of the defining parts of Race to Kindness. The organisation says its broader efforts have included more than 500,000 books, more than 100,000 meals and hundreds of toys distributed to children in hospitals and underserved communities.Jean has written A Kids Book About Leadership and Race to Kindness, using books to extend the message behind his community work.He has also said that his long-term interests include storytelling through writing or directing, although he has not settled on a specific career path.The next target for Race to Kindness is significantly larger than the campaigns that came before it: one million acts of kindness.
