Acts of Kindness: Windermere School, UK

To mark 50 years as a Round Square member school, Windermere School in the UK set itself a simple but powerful challenge: to generate 50 Acts of Kindness—one for each year of its Round Square journey. Inspired by scientific research showing that kindness benefits not only others but also our own mental wellbeing, the school expanded this idea into a broader “Acts of Kindness” campaign.

The campaign was student-led from the start. “It really was their initiative,” reflects Windermere School’s former Round Square Coordinator Claire Holmes. “They’re the ones who should be leading it.” The school’s Round Square student team—a cross-year group of students from Years 7 to 13 (ages 11 to 18)—took the lead, transforming the initial idea into a living, breathing project that invited every student to explore what kindness could look like in practice, in community, and in mindset.

How It Worked: A Model for Schools

From the outset, Windermere approached the campaign with clarity and structure. The initiative unfolded in five key stages, all of which can be replicated by any school looking to build a culture of kindness:

1. Start with Data: Measure Mood Before You Begin

The school launched a baseline wellbeing survey using Microsoft Forms, asking students to rate their mood, stress, and sense of wellbeing. Questions were adapted from a recognised psychological model. All 132 students in Years 7 to 13 completed it during a morning assembly—phones were allowed for once, creating a moment of novelty and engagement. While no individual scores were shared, the team calculated the overall averages across the group to identify general wellbeing trends.

By capturing a “before” snapshot, Windermere built in an evidence-led foundation, allowing for honest comparison two months later.

2. Empower Student Leaders

The Round Square student team created a menu of kindness ideas, from the quick and casual to the more thoughtful and sustained. They introduced the initiative at assembly with examples:

• A handwritten Post-it on a teacher’s desk.
• Helping a peer with homework.
• Inviting a neighbour to tea.
• Offering a compliment—and meaning it.

No act was too small. Students were told: if it feels meaningful to you, it counts.

3. Make Kindness Visible

To track impact, a second Microsoft Form allowed students to log each act they carried out. This created a dashboard of good deeds—a tally that turned kindness into something real and shareable. One tutor group went further, hosting a “tea and chess” session with local elderly residents, forging intergenerational connections through conversation and shared time.

4. Evaluate Impact—But Be Honest About What You Find

After two months, students retook the original survey. The results were modest but meaningful:

• Happiness increased by 0.88 points on average.
• Anxiety decreased by 1.61 points on average.

Claire Holmes notes that the timing may have muted the emotional effect. “Rather than waiting until the end, we are now exploring check-ins right after each act,” she explains. The team believes that capturing how students feel in the moment could provide a more accurate picture of the emotional effect of kindness.

Now, quick post-act reflections—“How do you feel now?”—are being trialled.

Global Campaign

The campaign has grown beyond Windermere School. In June, as the school hosted a Round Square conference on environmentalism, students invited partner schools to join the kindness initiative. “They have to run with it too,” Claire says. “That little bit of kindness we started at Windermere has gone global.”

The response has been as creative as it is diverse:

• In Sweden, Fredrikshovs Slotts Skola created a digital gallery of acts and reflections.
• In Namibia, St George’s School choreographed a traditional dance to express how kindness flows through their community.

The conference also featured voices that deepened the connection between kindness and global responsibility—like Nahla Summers, a global kindness advocate, and representatives from Fair Trade farming cooperatives, who spoke of ethical decision-making as a form of human kindness.

Plans are already underway to embed the initiative across younger year groups next year.

“If you have kindness and empathy, then your decisions are made with others in mind—‘How will this affect people? How will it affect the planet?’ It shifts how you learn, how you act, and how you think,” says Claire Holmes.