- June 29, 2024
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Six Ormond Beach kids are on a mission to spread kindness.
Joey Lucent, Lilly Lucent, Jeremy Fleshwood, Daniella Roa, Savannah Lockhart and Gavin Myrick are the founding members of the "Kind Human Club," formed a couple months ago by the St. Brendan Catholic School students to promote inclusion and acts of kindness, their first being a lemonade stand to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
"I'm thinking about lemonade — we can make cookies with it," said 8-year-old Lilly. "Like dairy-free cookie, because some people can't really have cookies."
Lilly's thinking of her brother Joey, who is 10 and was the driving force behind the club's creation.
Joey was born with Galactosemia, a rare genetic disorder that affects the body's ability to convert galactose, a sugar found in dairy, to glucose. His mother Brittany Lucent said Joey, who is also neurodivergent, often struggles to make connections with other kids.
In the last few months of school, some of his peers began to single him out and refuse to sit with him at lunch. One peer, whom he considered to be a good friend, didn't invite him to his birthday party.
"Some of my classmates were being mean to me, and then I decided to sit with someone else at lunch," Joey said.
When Joey expressed to his mom that he wished there were a group of kids that were always kind to one another, Brittany Lucent said she wanted to help him find those group of kids — ones that he could connect with. As someone who volunteers often at the school, she knew which kids would be a good fit. So the Kind Human Club was born.
"By them doing this, it gives them security to always have a group of kids that they can connect with and sit with at lunch, and do things with — talk about projects that they're working on together and feel that sense of community and feel that sense of belonging," Brittany Lucent said.
Children who are neurodivergent, she said, try hard to fit in with their peers, and it can be exhausting.
"If we celebrate all the wonderful qualities in every child instead of pick at their struggles the world would be a much better place to grow up in — with a lot less trauma to recover from in adulthood and a lot less lonely troubled kids that act out later in life," Brittany Lucent said. "... The Kind Human Club hopes to promote this and unite kids through understanding and cooperation — instead of competition and judgement."
The Kind Human Club will host their lemonade stand at Main Trail between Rio Pinar Drive and Iroquois Trail in The Trails starting at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 7.
The lemonade stand is just the start, the Lucent family said. Other initiatives they would like to do in the future include picking up trash, helping the homeless, and fostering shelter dogs and cats.
"Helping out people is kind," Lilly said. "That's why we're helping with kindness club. Some people are left out and it doesn't really feel good to be left out."
To learn more, visit the Kind Human Club page on Facebook.
