LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Fayette County Public School students can now join the latest "random acts of kindness" challenge. It's a twist on the "devious licks" challenge that plagued schools across the country.
One Lexington is an initiative started by Mayor Linda Gorton to combat youth violence. Hip-hop artist and community activist Devine Carama led the way as its director since its inception.
"For me, I'm always looking for a way to flip things. Instead of telling people, our young people, to stay off social media, how can we use social media and create challenges to get them to uplift their community and their school?" said Carama.
In addition to running One Lexington, Carama volunteers as a hall monitor within Fayette County Public Schools (FCPS). He says several teachers and staff mentioned the idea of doing something positive. Then, they got the parents on board.
"If we can make this cool, then maybe they'll create other challenges like this to combat some of the negative challenges, but there has to be a new norm set, and somebody has to start it," said Carama.
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He's still working on convincing several students to join in, but he says that's the beauty in it.
"There's nothing for them to follow. They actually have to step out and lead and create this trend, and so that's what I'm looking forward to.
He knows there will be more TikTok challenges on the horizon, but he's hopeful students see the lesson in the good they can do.
"I want to flood and permeate the airways and people's timelines with positivity. A lot of these kids get on the timelines, and it's drugs, it's violence. It's things being oversexualized. So, I want to flood their timelines with positive things because often times, you put out what you take in. If these kids are taking in all this negative stuff all the time, they're going to put that out in some way," said Carama.
The goal is to have all posts submitted to the hashtag #RandomActsofKindnessFCPS by the end of next week.
Carama says there may be even rewards involved.
