WHY AND WHEN DID YOUR FAMILY CREATE RACHEL'S CHALLENGE?
Rachel's Challenge was officially created two years after the shooting. We started hearing stories about her compassion and how she reached out to people, especially people that no one else cared about. She made a big difference for them. Then, we started reading some of her writings and her journals and realized that she had a strong sense during the last year of her life that she wasn't going to live to be very old. She felt like she was going to die at a young age.
The speaking started from all the interviews that we had done on national news and then a lot of doors opened for my dad. He's the one that started Rachel's Challenge. After the shooting, he gave a speech for the House Judiciary Committee and read a poem that was then put on the Internet and was one of the number one forwarded emails that year. The speech that he gave opened up a lot of doors for speaking. We started going out and sharing her story and telling how she reached out to people and the little things that she did. Then, we started to see that it was really having a big impact on people. It opened more and more doors and got us where we are today.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU GIVE SPEECHES?
I give speeches once a week.
DO YOU HAVE VOLUNTEERS?
We have 30 employees. We are the number one assembly program in the country, and we speak to about two million students a year right now.
WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HOPE TO PROVIDE TO STUDENTS?
The program is based on an essay that my sister wrote for her English class. She talked about the things that were important to her. Through that and things that she talked about we give five challenges in the presentation. The first challenge I give is to choose positive influences. At Columbine, they were very influenced by violence in the media. They dwelled on a lot of violence whether it was over the Internet, movies or music. My sister chose positive influences in her life. One of her biggest influences was Anne Frank. She was inspired by Anne to keep diaries, and that's how we have Rachel's diaries today. So, the first challenge is to choose positive influences.
The second challenge - Rachel wrote out a lot of her goals in her journals and we talk about how Rachel dared to dream that she can make a difference in this world with her kindness and compassion. In her essay, she said if one person can go out and show their compassion, it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go. The second challenge is to dare to dream. It's to challenge them to write out their goals and keep a journal. To show how important it is for people to write out their goals in life and not just to keep them up in their head but to put them down on paper.
For the third challenge, I share my stories of how Rachel reached out to a handicapped boy at school. He only had a slight disability that made him walk and talk a little bit slow and because of that he was usually ignored and sometimes he was made fun of. The time he met Rachel, he was in the hallway getting picked on by a couple of older guys. They were joking around and messing around. They knocked some books out of his hands. Rachel saw what was happening, and she went up and got in between the boy and the two big guys and stood up for him. She became friends with the boy named Adam and she would just go up to him and ask him how he was doing and give him a hug or listen to him. After the shooting, Adam came up to my family and said that Rachel didn't know it at the time she reached out to him that he was thinking about suicide. He didn't feel like he had any value or anything to offer this world. Rachel made him feel like he mattered. She helped him to hold on. The third challenge we give is that a little act of kindness and kind words can make a big difference.
The fourth challenge- I have a friend that was killed next to me underneath the table because he was black and he was made fun of for the color of his skin. So, the fourth challenge I give is to eliminate prejudice.
For the fifth challenge, I share a story about a time I had with my sister which the last thing we did was get into a fight. We were calling each other names. So, the last challenge is to tell five people in their life how much they care and appreciate them to start a chain reaction with the people around them.
Those are the five challenges that we give and it's a multi-media presentation. It's a lot of video. It's very powerful and emotional. I usually have hundreds of people talk to me after the presentation crying, including big guys, who are really touched by her message. It's not uncommon for me to get emails every single day from students who say it changed their perspective and got them thinking about how to treat other people.
DO YOU SPEND TIME WITH ANY OF THE TEACHERS AND/OR PARENTS TO DISCUSS ANY WARNING SIGNS?
I do four things everyday I speak. I do two assemblies and then I do a training with leaders in school and then I do a community event where parents come. A lot of kids usually bring their parents to come. We don't focus on warning signs and trying to dig out students who are possible shooters. Better yet, we focus on the answers instead of focusing on the problems. The answers to that are people reaching out to them and treating them better. Truth is, you can't profile someone and know who's going to do a shooting and who's not. You just can't. You can look at all the shooters and say "there were warning signs." You can profile and say "this person could be a shooter" and that's fine. I'm not saying that we should ignore signs but what we focus on is how can you prevent a person from doing that. If a person takes the time, a year, and plans to do the shooting, they will find a way to accomplish it if they are dedicated. But, the only way to change someone is to change their heart and the only way you can do that is by someone reaching out to them. So, that's the whole message- to step up compassion, think about the way you treat people because that says a lot about who you are as a person. A theme with a lot of the shooters is that they felt isolated or alone. This message gets people to reach out to people that are isolated and stand up for people that are put down. Kindness and compassion are the biggest antidotes to anger and hatred.
DO YOU THINK THE INCREASE IN VIOLENCE IS DUE TO A LACK OF EDUCATION? FOR INSTANCE, HAVING YOUR PROGRAM OR SOMETHING SIMILAR IN SCHOOLS?
I think it's a number of things but not any one given reason. It's different for every person's case. If people really want to make a difference, then you need to start with yourself. That's really the essence of making a difference. And, if you were in their shoes, what would you do to change your mind? Is it going to be laws? Is it going to be regulations? No, law never changed someone's heart. Those things are good and fine and if those things make change then great but that's not going to change a person's heart. It's not going to take away a desire for their heart to go out and kill or hurt people. It's going to be other people reaching out to them in their place of hurt that's going to make a difference.
AND FINALLY, WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR SISTER RACHEL?
I just want people to know that she was a genuine person and that she was just a real teenager. She wasn't out trying to be some kind of idol or put on a pedestal. She went through typical teenage stuff but difference was that she had a lot of compassion, and she believed that she was going to have an impact on the world through her compassion and she has- she has literally impacted millions of people.
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In 1999, 17-year-old Rachel Scott was one of the twelve students killed in the Columbine school shooting. After her death, Scott’s family created “Rachel’s Challenge” to spread her message of kindness and compassion to communities throughout the country.
Her brother, Craig, spoke with Crimejunkies for an in-depth look at their program...
