Lincoln County School District #2 students and staff are choosing to embrace a culture of increased kindness through the Stand4Kind organizations “Lemon Challenge” that is rolling out this month. Local youth advocate, Maggon Osmond, has partnered with Stand4Kind to bring programs and initiatives to Star Valley in an effort to support youth who struggle with mental and emotional health due to adverse social media and community experiences.
Stand4Kind is a non-profit organization that works with schools and youth on mental health, anti-bullying, suicide awareness and other social concerns, offering presentations to schools that promote self-confidence and self-assurance in students nation-wide. Osmond discovered Stand4Kind as she worked to address a mental health challenge in her own family, and has chosen to promote their initiatives among the local community. “We need to do more to help our children to deal with the culture and climate that they are experiencing in the world,” Osmond explained on the SVI Weekday Wake-up. “As I was doing my part to figure out my role in that, I stumbled across Stand4Kind and connected with their director of 15 years.”
The mental wellness platform that Stand4Kind promotes in something that Osmond recognized as valuable for Star Valley’s “students and teachers and parents of students. We all know parents who need this, and we do ourselves!” Stand4Kind provides assemblies and leadership training for students, teachers and parents. “With our fast-moving culture of technology, it takes a lot for us as parents to stay on top of what’s happening and how we can assist and help our own kids.”
Stand4Kind’s Lemon Challenge gives youth ownership and tools for living in kindness and promoting healthy social interaction. Heather Huish, who serves as a marketing agent with the non-profit, explained the challenge on the Weekday Wake-up. “One of the problems we have seen is the cycle of negative gossip – people talking badly about others. It’s not just the teenagers and the kids. It really is everyone.” Leaders in the organization presented the problem at their youth leadership camp, hoping that the youth would help create a solution. Thinking that this was primarily a problem among girls, the adults learned that young male athletes face the challenge as well. So, the challenge is extended to everyone, male and female, young and old.
Statistically, 96% of people speak negatively of other people. Stand4Kind wants to change this with a simple and engaging game that friends can share on social media. “If negative gossip is not sweet, and kindness is sweet, what would be the opposite of sweet? It would be sour,” said Huish. “We decided to pull in lemons for this.” They are asking friends to create a trend on their social media accounts that spins the talk in the opposite direction – for good.
They are inviting folks to tag a friend and share something positive on their social media accounts that they heard about that friend. Then, folks are invited to bite into a lemon and make the statement, “Sour gossip spreads fast. Let’s make kindness spread faster.” The trend can then spread quickly when folks tag at least three other friends and invite them to participate in the Lemon Challenge.
“It’s a fun game of consciously thinking about talking positively about other people,” said Huish. “You can tag your friends so that it passes on. Our hope is that this will go viral so that people will stop and think about what they are saying. If you do this challenge as a teen and you see other teens doing this, it could make a difference for them.”
Ben Kjar, who serves as a motivational speaker with Stand4Kind, was also in the studio with Osmond and Huish, promoting the Lemon Challenge. Kjar is Utah Valley University’s first-ever NCAA Division 1 Wrestling All-American, a World Champion in Greco-Roman Wrestling, and a silver medalist in Freestyle Wrestling, representing the USA at 40 years old. He speaks internationally, sharing his story with millions worldwide, of his personal challenge as a human with Crouzon Syndrome.
He described the condition during the radio segment as something that has drawn cruelty from children and adults alike. Crouzon Syndrome is a “cranial-facial anomaly that is super rare, affecting the way you look. The bones in your face don’t grow at the same speed. It affects the way you eat, the way you breathe, the way you look. You have to surgically expand you skull again and again and again, so that your brain grows at the correct speed. At a young age, I was made fun of. Every day.”
Kjar is passionate about reminding folks that what they say matters. He reminds parents that their children watch them and follow their example, and hopes that adults will chose awareness of the words and phrases they use, and make a change. “We are inviting everyone to take this challenge. This in not just for kids and teenagers. We want adults involved in making this change, and it will be something that changes the entire community. You would be surprised at how many adults will say very, very mean things.” Representing Stand4Kind over the last decade has changed his life. “It has changed the way I show up.” It’s important to be kind to others, but “where does it really stem from?”
He believes that peaking kindly to ourselves is the foundation of kindness in our society. “Come back home to you. You are more able to speak kindly to others when you speak kindly to yourself. What we say out loud, verbally, externally, is what is inside of us. When you look in the mirror today, what do you say? How do you speak to yourself? How do you love on you? As you do that, other people see it. That’s true kindness. Too many times, we are nice to others, but it’s a fake version of kindness. Being nice is polite, saying please and thank you. True kindness is internally understanding that you are a gift! But if you don’t treat yourself like that gift, it’s hard to treat others like that.”
Learning how to respond to others when they are unkind to you is another important consideration. Responding with kindness “comes from confidence, 100%,” said Kjar. “I will come back with meanness, with anger and frustration if I don’t know who I am. If I don’t know who I am and what I stand for, Dude, I am going to be whatever people say I should be. That’s not life. I teach people how to call their shot. I teach people how to get people in their life that help them do that – really rad cheerleaders.” He seeks to be that for others. “They call me up and are like, ‘Dude, I need you in my life.’ I’m like, ‘Ya! You do, cause we are gonna light you up!’ We put a time clock on it. We call it a shot clock. We allow people to live at a higher level for themselves to gain confidence so that when hard things come their way, which they will, they can react with kindness, confidence and love.”
Osmond is dedicated to taking this initiative beyond school and into homes. “Getting parents and adults involved is so important. We teach these skills to the kids, but when you take them out of a school situation, where they can buy into believing in themselves,” and they are working to apply their new confidence and skills, but go home to a different environment or situation, it becomes difficult for them to swim upstream. “We need a culture of kindness and that starts with every interaction you have with another human being. Your kids are watching you. Every time you are in a negative conversation of having a negative interaction, and not handling that in a great way, not to say we don’t do that, cause we all do, but when we can develop a culture or community of kindness, we are setting our kids and ourselves up for success.”
Watch for Kjar’s award-winning film, “STANDOUT”, scheduled for release in January 2026. To learn more about the Lemon Challenge, find the Stand4Kind pages on Instagram, Tik-Tok or Facebook. If you choose to participate, please tag Stand4Kind in your post. Donations to the non-profit go toward schools that are participating in the programs offered through the organization.
