Published: April 1, 2000

Sweet Charity

Each February for the past three years, Do Something, a nonprofit that inspires and trains young community leaders, has invited students to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. by participating in the organization's Kindness and Justice Challenge. For two weeks following the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, students perform "acts of kindness" (helping others) and "acts of justice" (standing up for what's right) and report them to their teachers, who post the good deeds on Do Something's Web site ( www.dosomething.org ). As the following examples from this year's Challenge show, opportunities to do good abound in the moral-dilemma-strewn territory known as school:

"The teacher gave us a big test in a booklet. She didn't mark one of mine wrong that should have been wrong. When we were going over the test in class, I raised my hand and told her she had missed it."

—Alexandra, 8, Wisconsin