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Lady Gaga is educating others on the quiet power of kindness with her new book Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community. The “Rain On Me” singer, 34, and her mother Cynthia Germanotta founded the Born This Way Foundation, in 2012 and went on to launch Channel Kindness a platform that features real life stories about young people and mental health, and organizations making a difference in their communities by orchestrating acts of kindness. Now, Gaga, her mother, and a collection of young authors have turned these stories and more into a book. Channel Kindness released in the United States and United Kingdom on September 22.
“I want to help kids that have been hurt or are hurting. I want to help them get through that part of their life,” Gaga said during a recent video discussion about her new book, which is already a #1 bestseller on Amazon. “‘Channel Kindness’ is our youth storytelling platform, and we’ve trained more than 100 youth reporters on the power of telling your stories. What’s amazing is it’s also made by young people, for young people,” she explained.
“When we first started this organization we didn’t know exactly what it was going to be yet, but we had a mission,” the “911” singer continued in reference to the Channel Kindness platform. “We decided our mission was to build a kinder and braver world, and that we were going to do research, as well as look for resources that were going to help facilitate that dream. I heard really really deep, beautiful, but tragic also stories from fans,” she explained, adding, “It was very focused around mental health, and they were all in some way going through the same things.”
Channel Kindness features a collection of inspirational stories written by young people as well as personal notes of empowerment from Lady Gaga. The authors are all contributors to Born This Way Foundation’s Channel Kindness program, which seeks to elevate youth voices by providing a platform for first-person accounts of everyday acts of bravery and kindness. The book will also call on readers to perform acts of kindness in their own communities and provide helpful resources pertaining to each story.
“My daughter and I believe in the power of kindness to transform our world and the potential of young people to lead that change,” Cynthia said in a press release. “That’s why we couldn’t be more excited about ‘Channel Kindness’ and the opportunity to share these stories from youth from around the world who remind us that acts of kindness – small and large – are shaping their communities in meaningful ways every day.”
In a post on Instagram celebrating the release of her new book, Gaga explained that Channel Kindness also targets the mental health crisis in 2020. “It is more important than ever that we channel kindness towards each other, for each other, and with each other in a vision for a kinder and braver world,” she wrote alongside a photo with her mother.