Before students head back to their classrooms, Bloomingdale’s and Kind Campaign, an anti-bullying program, are teaming to end girls bullying girls. The back-to-school season, Aug. 22-26, was aptly chosen for events and activations underscoring the importance of confidence, kindness and inclusion. Girls bully other girls differently than the way boys bully boys, Kind Campaign noted on its Web site. While the latter can be aggressively physical, girls exhibit classic mean behavior such as spreading rumors or gossip, ostracizing, telling secrets and sending nasty e-mails and text messages.
A capsule collection of T-shirts, including women’s styles designed by Girl Dangerous, a brand that celebrates female empowerment, and men’s and kids’ T-shirts by Kid Dangerous, will be sold with 10 percent of sales benefitting Kind Campaign, which in 2009 was launched by Lauren Paul and Molly Thompson. The eight shirts, priced from $28 to $39, feature messages such as “Find Your Kind,” “Kind Campaign,” “Cool to Be Kind” and “Kindness is Magic.”
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Bloomingdale’s, which has a long-standing tradition of philanthropy, has supported organizations such as the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Child Mind Institute in the past. Its latest partnership with Kind Campaign, the country’s foremost organization working to end girl-against-girl bullying, is part of the retailer’s biannual Fashionable Fundraiser. “We get behind causes that are important to our communities and our customers,” said Frank Berman, Bloomingdale’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “Fashionable Fundraiser was created to drive awareness, conversation and support surrounding universal topics, and anti-bullying is a powerful issue affecting many of our friends and neighbors.”
Pledge walls at Bloomingdale’s units will be reserved for kind words, positive affirmations, uplifting doodles or anti-bullying slogans, with the murals donated to local schools. At a bracelet station, Kind Campaign trademarked messages such as “You Can Sit with Us” can be worked into one-of-a-kind pieces, while another station will help facilitate involvement, whether it’s becoming a Kind Ambassador, starting a Kind Club or bringing Kind Campaign to a local community. During the event, customers will be able to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar with the difference in change donated to Kind Campaign, and earmarked for the assemblies and curriculum the organization offers to schools at no charge.