In 2020, our family established Choose Kind Week as a way to honor our daughter and sister, Ashton, who was needlessly killed by a drunk driver on July 28, 2019. Through our grief we have found that spreading kindness and doing right by others is helpful. It’s just as important to tell Ashton’s story so that we might change actions and prevent another family from suffering.

Over the past two years, we have asked you to participate with us by choosing to do acts of kindness in Ashton’s name. While an exact number is hard to reach it’s reasonable to estimate that we’ve touched over 700 people since we started this mission.

Last year we decided to finally put the wheels in motion to create the ChooseKindACD Foundation. We easily set up as a corporation but getting our non-profit designation was a bit harder. We are proud to say we stuck with it and it finally came through just last week, right before Choose Kind week 2022. We are overwhelmed by the continued generosity of our friends and family and now all of your donations can be tax deductible!! This year many of you have already donated to help us partner with Pilgrims Inn, a local non-profit, that helps the homeless or those in danger of becoming homeless. The foundation is helping to provide 19 children with back-to-school clothing. Please watch the website for additional details about this special project.

Our vision for the foundation has always been to pick causes that were near and dear to Ashton’s heart or spoke to us in some way about her spirit. We will continue to do that work through the foundation but don’t want to lose sight of small everyday ways we can still work to touch people’s hearts. Again we are asking you to join us this year in doing something small in the week between when Ashton was killed (July 28) and what should be her 19th birthday (August 4th), to spread kindness. This could be as easy as bringing cookies to a neighbor, paying for someone’s coffee, just holding the door open for someone, or smiling at them in line at the store. One of our favorite memories of Ashton is how she would wave at other drivers just to make them smile and laugh. We can still hear her laughter especially if they waved back.  You can download this document to share with recipients of your kindness that shares Asthon’s message.