“It hurts your family and everyone around you when you don’t listen to the Hands Project. There are 70,000 people in the city of Avondale. Imagine if they all stopped hurting each other. We’d be the safest city ever.”

“One of our old students, Angela Silva, came back to visit our class today and was telling me about her new school.  I asked her if she had met any nice kids there, and she told me that all the kids at her school were mean.  Initially taken back, I responded by asking her how they acted mean and why she thought they were like that.  Without me making ANY reference to it, she immediately brought up The Hands Project.  She said, “you know, it’s different over there because they don’t have anything like the ‘hands and words’ project.  Kids are getting in fights every single day and they don’t get it.””

“Violent behavior has never been a severe issue at the school but Hands & Words Are Not For Hurting® ingrains a nonviolent behavior into youths so that it will be carried forward into adulthood.”

“We want to stop the bullying. We want the world to be better”

“I think this message can be taught to anyone. We needed a positive behavior program”

“It takes time for any change to happen, especially for such a hard topic. The power is to empower the kids. That’s really how transformation happens.”

“We owe you a lot for introducing this program to our school and I wanted you to know that.  Things don’t happen overnight, but I do see my students improving.  The neatest thing though is when they forget and someone else will remind them that hands and words are not for hurting.  It is sinking in and that is fantastic.”

“It’s so easy. The kids get it. The people get it. It isn’t a goofy pledge. There’s a very serious meaning behind it.”

“We want this world to be better. We’re making a promise to not use violence”

“My vision is for it to be in all schools in the district and in Arizona. It’s all about them. It’s their school, their community.”

“My vision is for it to be in all schools in the district and in Arizona…It’s all about them. It’s their school, their community.”

Sir Darrell-Bridges, 11, has asked his immediate family members and cousins to support him in creating a peaceful environment not only at school but at home, too. “People were using negative words toward each other,” he said about conditions at the school. “First there would be verbal fights and then it would turn physical.”