Indianapolis Student’s Kindness Video Awarded at National Contest
Indianapolis Student’s Stop-Motion Video on Kindness Wins National Contest
INDIANAPOLIS–An Indianapolis middle school student is being recognized after coming in second place in a national contest about kindness.
Bea Blettner, a seventh grader at Harshman Middle School in the Indianapolis Public Schools district, earned second place in a national video contest focused on kindness and sponsored by the Cleveland-based nonprofit Values-in-Action Foundation and its Kindland initiative.
Her entry featured a stop-motion Claymation video that she produced and narrated herself.
“My video is about this little clay blob, and his name is Billy, and he goes to work and its his first day and everybody’s kind of rude to him and he goes home and he’s really sad,” she said. “And then he goes back to work and he’s like, ‘What if i was just nice to everybody? Maybe they would be kind back to me.’”
Her simple message to be kind was spurred the moment she learned about the contest.
“I was like I think that would be really cool, and I had a hobby for a long time of making stop-motion videos and I just thought that it would be a fun experience, and I had no idea that I would win.”
Assistant Principal Jack Hesser said Bea did all the work to win. “I’m super excited for Bea. I also get to take very little credit because Bea is such an exceptional student who probably would have found this out on their own. So I’m just grateful to play even the smallest part.”
Bea says small acts of kindness become bigger ones, and both are important.
“Small acts of kindness, are maybe gonna make somebody’s day,” she said. “But I think that a larger act of kindness can really resonate with a lot of different people. I think that it’s really important to do both.”
Her stop-motion video ends with a lesson for everyone in its final words.
“I have learned that kindness conquers all. It unites people and makes everyone happy.”
Bea’s video will be presented along with the first-place winner on Super Bowl weekend to students all over the country.
But, Bea has a bigger idea: to go on to college and study to become a filmmaker.
