ENGAGEMENT IDEAS & ACTIVITIES

ENGAGEMENT IDEAS & ACTIVITIES

Bringing Choose Love to your community can be as simple as coloring lawns with yard signs or decorating sidewalks with chalk illustrations of the Choose Love Formula™.

Below, we have started a collection of ideas and engaging activities that reinforce the Choose Love Formula™ while also getting community members out of their homes and exposing them to all that their community (and Choose Love) has to offer.

We hope you’ll share your own ideas and activities, too, in the Discussion Forums below each section to help us grow this resource!

Quick Jump Menu

FIRST: The Choose Love Formula™ Lessons

  • Lessons For Registered Community Members
  • Lessons For Non-Registered Community Members
  • Lessons For Local Shops and Organizations

Platforms For Teaching and Sharing The Choose Love Formula™ Lessons

  • Sharing via Email and Web-Based Platforms
  • Sharing in Workshops or Small Groups
  • Sharing via Social Media

Color The Community with Choose Love

  • Yard Signs
  • Storefront Window Art
  • Chalk/ Sidewalk Art

Choose Love Celebration Events

  • Experiential Stations
  • Example Activities
  • Past Events
  • Helpful Tools For Celebration Events

Choose Love Challenge

  • Plan Ahead
  • Group 1: Individuals and Families
  • Group 2: Local Businesses

FIRST: The Choose Love Formula™ Lessons

The foundation of all Choose Love community engagements and activities is, of course, the Choose Love Formula™ .

We created our Choose Love For Home™ program with the goal of offering bite-sized, high-level lessons that cover the basics and can equip parents and caregivers with the general knowledge and language upon which our robust PreK through 12th grade school curriculum is built.

Should you wish to share these lessons with your community, we have made the lessons and supporting discussion topics available for you below.

For ideas about how to share the lessons with your community, please see the next section called “Platforms for Sharing Choose Love lessons.”

Lessons For Registered Community Members

Currently available in both English and Spanish, the program includes a series of video lessons under 5 minutes each, as well as some follow up activities and discussion topics for each lesson.

This format makes the program useful not only at home, but also for facilitating small group study sessions (book clubs, etc.)

The program is free for anyone to access after registering for Choose Love CONNECT.

There are many other great features available to registered CONNECT Community members, including the ability to access all of our additional programs and resources, connect with like-minded CONNECT Community members, receive real-time updates and information from the Choose Love Movement, and more!

You can refer people to this link to register, then instruct them to look under the Programs menu for Choose Love For Home™.

(Don’t miss the Discussion and Q&A forum, below, for more insights and information about this topic.)

Lessons For Non-Registered Community Members

We encourage as many people as possible to register for the Choose Love CONNECT Community because of all the amazing resources that will become instantly available to them.

However, to make it as easy as possible for you to share Choose Love lessons, we have created a PDF copy of the english version of the instructional videos from Choose Love For Home.

This will enable you to directly copy and paste the instructional video links into whatever means you decide to use for distribution of the lessons without requiring the learner to register on Choose Love CONNECT.

 

(Don’t miss the Discussion and Q&A forum, below, for more insights and information about this topic.)

Lessons For Local Shops and Organizations

We also created a “Local Business Edition” of the program, which includes the same videos as in the Choose Love For Home program but includes group discussion guides and ideas for ways to practice and model Choose Love in the workplace, as teams and individuals, and model Choosing Love for the community.

Garnering participation by local businesses and organizations in the community in your efforts to bring Choose Love there is a highly effective strategy for increasing the visibility of your efforts.

Local businesses and organizations will enjoy so many benefits by choosing to support you and participate in Choose Love, including:

  • improving affinity with customers in community by demonstrating a commitment to the Choose Love Formula(TM) principles for a safer, more loving world
  • ability to leverage turnkey promotion and ready-made collateral (via CONNECT Community and Choose Love Shop)
  • strengthening employee morale, productivity and communication
  • attracting new customers into business and/or drive repeat business (promotions, press releases, on-site events, sponsorships, etc)

We recommend approaching your local Chamber of Commerce and/or businesses and organizations directly using the following resources:

  • Outreach letter/email
  • Presentation

For ideas about additional ways local businesses and organizations can participate in Choosing Love, see our “Engagement Ideas and Activities page.

Platforms For Teaching and Sharing The Choose Love Formula™ Lessons

The Choose Love Formula™ is the easy-to-learn foundation of all things Choose Love. 

While many community members will likely learn about the Formula through participation in or observation of engagement events, here are some ways you might want to more formally “teach” the core concepts of COURAGE+GRATITUDE+FORGIVENESS+COMPASSION-IN-ACTION = CHOOSING LOVE.

Sharing via Email and Web-Based Platforms

There are a variety of ways to share Choose Love lessons via the web, both within our CONNECT Community and outside of it (which is why we provide the Lessons in this PDF format for your convenience.) We have listed a few ideas for you below and hope you’ll share any new ideas with us, too!

  • CREATE AN EMAIL SERIES — Invite participants to register for an email series (using a free platform like MailChimp) and copy/paste and schedule each lesson as an individual email
  • LANDING PAGE — Create a landing page (using a free website platform like Google Sites) where you can post each video lesson and add supporting information, printable activities, etc
  • Choose Love CONNECT “Group” (or Facebook Groups) — Registered members of Choose Love CONNECT can create a free Group that can serve as a ‘website’ for your community engagement effort. The benefit of inviting community members to register in order to participate is that they will have access to all of the other resources Choose Love makes available to CONNECT members (i.e. new monthly calendars, our Book Club, the ability to connect with other Choose Love members, etc) which will enrich their understanding of and engagement with the principles of Choose Love.

Community Example: Choose Love Livermore

Here is an example of the way the community of Livermore, CA combines the use of a LANDING PAGE (which provides information about the initiative without requiring registration, and then links to the Registration page) and a Choose Love CONNECT Group for posting updates, copies of the presentations they give, etc. CHOOSELOVELIVERMORE.ORG

They purchased the domain name “ChooseLoveLivermore.org” at GoDaddy.com for a nominal annual fee that they use on all of their communications; and all of their communications drive community members to the LANDING PAGE as a starting point.

To generate awareness in their community, they created brochures and Choose Love Formula™ bookmarks that they handed out at various Farmer’s Markets hosted by the town.

Livermore had the advantage of Choose Love For Schools™ being already taught in all of their schools, and the school district partnered with the volunteers of Choose Love Livermore to deliver monthly webinars to parents and community members where the videos were shown.

Sharing in Workshops or Small Groups

The five-minutes-or-less format of our Choose Love Lesson videos, combined with the Group/Family Exercise suggestions and Discussion Topics handouts that coordinate with each lesson, are perfectly suited for small groups and workshops.

Each Lesson could serve as a 45-minute to one hour meeting topic, and although there are only 6 Lessons total there are endless ways to expand each Lesson into multiple meetings … after all, we have created an entire Pre-K through 12th grade, yearlong curriculum around them!

In fact, you are free to explore our curriculum and utilize lessons and/or resources from them. You might start by looking through the Supplemental Resources we provide to all educators, and then peruse our Original Choose Love Enrichment Program, middle and high school levels.

Book lovers and/or book club facilitators should consider starting with Scarlett’s books and can then follow the books being read as part of the Choose Love Book Club.

Between “homework” assignments related to personal and family exploration of each lesson topic and service opportunities, we feel confident you’ll find enough ideas and resources here to support a robust Choose Love workshop or small group!

Please share your Workshop and Small Groups ideas and success stories below, we’d love to hear about them!

Sharing via Social Media

Although eLearning is based on formalized learning, it is provided through electronic devices such as Electronic learning, is the delivery of learning and training through digital resources computers, tablets and even cellular phones that are connected to the internet.

Color The Community with Choose Love

Here are some fun ways to get everyone in the community engaged with your Choose Love community initiative, while simultaneously raising awareness of/ reinforcing the Choose Love Formula™.

Yard Signs

Imagine the front lawns in your community dotted with bright and cheerful “We Choose Love!” lawn signs! In addition to being a great advertisement for your Choose Love initiative, that will be seen over and over again as people pass by the signs, they are also terrific conversation-starters. Ideally, as part of purchasing a sign and/or staking it in their yard, homeowners will already be aware of your community engagement initiative and able to explain it to passers-by who are curious to know.

FUNdraiser

One way to get the signs is to order them/ share the link to them on our website, where a percentage of the proceeds will be automatically donated towards helping us grow our movement. This is an easy way for people to feel like part of their participation is also “giving back,” which is a win for all of us!

Re-use/Recycle

Another way to get lawn signs is to recycle existing lawn signs that were used for other types of ads or announcements. You can check your local refuse center to see if they have a collection there, or — with permission — go around your community and collect them from people’s lawns once they have expired (i.e. following a local election, graduation, etc.)

The activity, then, would be to spray paint the signs (for example, spray paint a white background to prepare for new design.) You can divide up the signs by neighborhood, or school, and assign each one to paint their signs with one of the Choose Love Formula™ values (COURAGE, GRATITUDE, FORGIVENESS or COMPASSION-IN-ACTION) on one side of the sign, and a “We Choose Love” design on the other side.

Storefront Window Art

This is another fun way to engage the community in learning and practicing the Choose Love Formula, and a great way to engage local businesses in the process, too!

THE PITCH TO LOCAL SHOPS: By allowing their storefront window to be painted as part of the Choose Love Community Engagement effort, local businesses will not only be publicly acknowledging their support for a kinder, safer more loving community but will also drive attention/ foot traffic into their stores.

In fact, we created a “Local Business Edition” of the Choose Love for Communities™ program just for them that includes ideas for incorporating the practices of the Choose Love Formula™ into their everyday operations, as well. Feel free to share this PDF with local store owners.

THE ACTIVITY: Divide your group into “teams,” and assign each team a storefront window to design and paint, as well as one of the Choose Love Formula™ values (COURAGE, GRATITUDE, FORGIVENESS or COMPASSION-IN-ACTION.) Encourage them to represent their Choose Love Formula™ value in whatever creative way they wish on their window, and plan a contest around the event (perhaps a gift basket of items from participating shops could be the prize?)

Give the community a week or two to review and “vote” on which window they believe to be best, and find a way to label the winning window (gigantic blue ribbon?) to attract even more attention to the shop.

Chalk / Sidewalk Art

Whether on the sidewalks downtown in your community, the streets where you live or the blacktop outside your school, chalk designs are another easy, fun and inexpensive way to inspire both the chalk artists and passers-by with images and messages depicting the Choose Love Formula™.

Perhaps draw a game of COURAGE + GRATITUDE + FORGIVENESS + COMPASSION-IN-ACTION hopscotch, with each row of square(s) being a Formula value; as they hop onto each square, the player can shout out an example of what that formula value means, and when they complete their turn they can be encouraged to tell the next person in line something kind.

Choose Love Celebration Events

Choose Love Celebrations are a great way to “Have A Lot of Fun” while educating the community about the Choose Love Formula™. These events are flexible in every way, limited only by your imagination!

Experiential Stations

Typically, regardless of the setting and/or timing of the performances or activities surrounding the Community Celebration, most celebrations are centered around Choose Love Experiential Stations.

Each “station,” which could consist of a few lunch tables pushed together or an outdoor tent, for example, hosts an activity that is specifically designed to teach/experience one of the 4 tenets of the Choose Love Formula.

As part of participation in the Choose Love Experiential Stations, students/ participants typically receive a Choose Love Passport (template available here). Each page of the Passport represents one of the four Choose Love Formula tenets, and after they complete each station, students receive a stamp or sticker on the corresponding page of their Passport.

When their Passports are completed, they usually submit them for some sort of prize or goodie that can be purchased from the Choose Love Shop.

Example Activities

A) Forgiveness Station – Discussion around forgiving. Students write or draw a picture of what something or someone (themselves included) that they need to forgive. Then the act of letting go – crumpling up the paper and tossing it into a basket/garbage.

B) Courage Station – Discuss bravery and practice brave breathing and brave poses. Take photo performing pose with either the police, fire, or other first responder.

C) Compassion in Action Station – Students receive a wooden “compassion coin” that can be stamped or decorated; a discussion about Compassion-In-Action follows, and each student makes a plan to give their coin to someone else.

D) Gratitude – Students will have prepared thank you cards in advance of the event. Discussion will follow about gratitude and the thank you cards the kids made, why it is so important, etc.

These examples give you an idea of what the Choose Love Experiential Stations are intended to achieve, but depending on the amount of time available for the event and/or the age of the participants, any number of activities could be substituted or added.

Past Events

 

Choose Love 2021 Bus Tour Through New Hampshire

More than ever, schools, homes and communities need the healing power of the Choose Love Formula™ to help them recover, rejuvenate their spirits and reconnect with the choice we all have to thoughtfully respond to things beyond our control.

In partnership with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, Scarlett Lewis and the Choose Love Bus travelled throughout the state to bring hope and inspiration to communities in need.

VIEW EVENT VIDEO

Choose Love Hike for Hope 9/26/21 – Seneca, SC

“Hike for Hope” was created to help reduce the stigma that often surrounds mental health issues in the Seneca community. The event included participation by community organizations to help increase awareness of their services to community members.

VIEW EVENT VIDEO

Choose Love Day 11/9/19 Bentonville, AR

This was a town-wide celebration that included participation by the community’s town government, schools (all of which have fully-implemented Choose Love For Schools™) and local businesses.

The event was kicked off the night before by introducing Scarlett Lewis during the varsity football game halftime, and then the following day with a Mayoral Proclamation of November 9 as “Choose Love Day.”

A carnival open to all community members was held at one of the schools for the remainder of the day and into the evening. In addition to music and games, there were Experiential Stations with multiple games and activities created by the students.

VIEW EVENT VIDEO 1

VIEW EVENT VIDEO 2

Choose Love Celebration – Lawn School in Jamestown, RI – June 2021

A Choose Love Celebration Event doesn’t have to include the entire town: so many of our participating Choose Love schools create a special afternoon just for students to celebrate the Choose Love Formula!

VIEW EVENT VIDEO

We hope you’ll share your community event video with us in the Comments section below!

Choose Love Challenge

Organizing a Choose Love Challenge is another fun way to engage both community members AND local businesses/organizations in sharing and spreading Choose Love community-wide.

The idea is to “gamify” acts of Choosing Love in a way that encourages both individual activities and participation by local businesses, to truly create a community that Chooses Love.

The Challenge can be used to build momentum towards a follow-up community event or as a stand-alone “crash course” on Choose Love. It is divided into four segments that each align with one of the 4 character values of the Choose Love Formula™, and you can choose to execute it with one or both Groups (described below) based on time and resources.

Please note: this will require a good deal of advance organization and planning, and will require helpers as well as a web-based platform for disseminating information. We have provided some recommendations for that here.

Plan Ahead

This activity can be executed in many different ways and on a much smaller scale than the entire community, but if you intend for it to be a community-wide campaign, preparedness will be key to its success.

In addition to planning the resources you will be using to share Lessons and disseminate information (see Tools & Templates page,) we suggest the following:

  • Identify neighborhood “Choose Love Captains” who agree in advance to start the Week 1 (“love bomb”) chains in their neighborhoods, to ensure they get spread to a good number of households. The more buy-in you can get in advance, the better — for example, maybe the school PTO would agree to help and engage their children in helping, etc.
  • Send a press release to the local media at least a week in advance of the Challenge launch, followed by a series of articles for publication during each week of the Challenge. Week one’s article might say something like “Watch Out For Love Bombs This Week!” to try to get people excited about the activity …. and, of course, it would provide a link to the platform you are using for dissemination and highlight the local businesses participating in that weeks’ activities.
  • Decide on the “prize” that will be given to people who submit their completed Challenge Booklets. Perhaps each participating business would donate something from their shop, which could either all go into one big prize bag or perhaps be used to give multiple prizes. This is an area to be thoughtful, because we want to incentivize people of all ages to participate, and the reward doesn’t have to only be monetary. For example: a ride to school or the office in a fire truck! Be creative and have fun with the prizes, and plan the final submission date and date of winner announcement so you can include it with your online program information.

If you plan to involve local businesses, it might make sense to first present the idea of participating to the Chamber of Commerce. Don’t be nervous — plan to show one of the videos we made available HERE, and follow it up with this 5-slide presentation. Explain what participating businesses would be required to do, and gather a list of interested participants. Assign each of them one of the 4 challenge weeks, explain their roles during that week, share the Local Business Edition lessons with them and point them toward the Choose Love Shop where they can purchase instructional posters for their store. Don’t forget to give them their Challenge Book Stickers!

Group 1: Individuals and Families

The first part of the Choose Love Challenge is focused on encouraging individuals to perform an action based on the Formula value for that week.

They begin the week by learning about the Formula value by watching the coordinating Choose Love Lesson, which you (as the campaign organizer) would share according to one of the platforms we discuss here. They would then be instructed to perform an act associated with that value, that you would suggest.

For example, because it is the kickoff week and to encourage raising awareness about the Challenge initiative, the first week (Week 1: COURAGE) could encourage people to “step outside of their comfort zone” by doing something nice for a neighbor they don’t know very well.

That “thing” could be to “love bomb” 3 neighbors by anonymously leaving a Choose Love care package or pre-designed note on their doorstep, and invite them to “pass it on” by repeating the activity for 3 other neighbors.

You could make this template available for download on the same platform you used to share the lesson, invite people to print 9 copies of it, color in 3 (fun for younger kids to participate) and affix them to 3 neighbors’ doors, including the 3 extra sheets for each one to pass along. If your platform is a landing page with a unique URL, you can write the URL onto the love bomb printouts so the next group of people can download more copies.

No matter what the care package is, the lesson in this activity should be that stepping out of one’s comfort zone can be scary or uncomfortable, but very rewarding. If you can set it up so that it becomes a “chain” of action, it will also help spread awareness about your Choose Love initiative!

Idea for Challenge Week 2 (Gratitude:) Create a gigantic Community Gratitude Chain.

  • In a central public location (or participating local business or organization with large common area,) set up:
    • table
    • containers of construction paper, cut into thick long strips that can be joined together like chain links
    • markers
    • glue, glitter, feathers, buttons, and/or other decorations
  • Throughout the course of the Challenge week, community members are invited to come (and bring family) to write something they are grateful for on a strip, decorate it and glue it to the Gratitude Chain.
  • At the end of the Challenge Week, plan to display the community’s Gigantic Gratitude Chain in a public location that shows how impressive the chain is; invite people to take a selfie in front of the chain and post to social media with hashtag #ChooseLoveChallenge; perhaps get a community leader to pose for a photo and/or comment on the end result in the local paper.

Idea for Challenge Week 3 (Forgiveness:) Create a gigantic Community Waste Basket/ Recycling Bin.

  • In a central public location (or participating local business or organization with large common area,) set up:
    • table
    • containers of paper
    • pens
    • a steamer trunk or gigantic waste basket
  • Throughout the course of the week, community members are invited to come (and bring family) to write down feelings they’d like to “let go of” related to a painful situation or circumstance, crumple up the paper into a ball and toss it into the receptacle; repeating as often as they’d like to repeat this forgiveness process and help fill up the container
  • At the end of the Challenge Week, repeat selfies in front of overflowing receptacle of Forgiveness; perhaps light it on fire (!) for effect (with the oversight, of course, of local fire fighters)

Idea for Challenge Week 4 (Compassion-In-Action:) Design Positive Expressions Posters and Hold Up In Busy Intersections/ Make Someone’s Day.

This is an amazing feel-good activity that can be performed in groups (i.e. neighborhoods, led by Choose Love Captains) at different times and locations throughout the course of the week. Each group will design inspirational posters with words of kindness and encouragement that are large enough for passing cars to easily read and spend one hour holding up the posters in designated intersections for exposure to as many passers-by as possible.

This can also be accomplished on busy pedestrian sidewalks and street corners.

Group 2: Local Businesses

The role of local businesses in the Choose Love Challenge is very simple but extremely powerful in terms of generating awareness and action around Choosing Love.

Community members are invited to download and print a “Challenge Book,” from your online platform, which they would then bring into participating local businesses with them on specific weeks during the Challenge.

Each participating business will be assigned one week of the Challenge. During that week, community members will be encouraged to visit their shop and perform a task related to the Formula value for that week.

For example, during COURAGE week, people would need to show a Brave Pose to the store owner or employee, and in return the store owner or employee would give them a sticker to put into their Challenge Book.

Why not also turn this into a social media opportunity for the local businesses and ask people to share their pics of Brave Pose at the business with a special hashtag?!

During GRATTUDE week, the customer could make an affirmation statement to the store owner; FORGIVENESS week, they could “cut the cord” (i.e. a piece of yarn or something related to the store,) and COMPASSION-IN-ACTION they could simply share an example of a way they stepped outside of their own “busyness” to help someone else. You get the idea … very simple.

When their Challenge Book has all 4 stickers in it, the community member signs the pledge on the back and takes a picture of their book to submit it to the designated location for prize drawing.