People fill the lanes of the street. A helicopter from a news station overlooks the scene. National broadcasts show a community coming together after a tragedy. That’s how co-chair of the SevenDays challenge Mindy Corporon said she envisioned the SevenDays Faith Walk. As it turned out, she wasn’t wrong.

In April 2013, a white supremacist shot and killed three people at the Kansas City Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement center. The victims included Mindy’s father, William Corporon, and son, Reat Underwood. Shortly after the tragedy, Mindy founded the Faith Always Wins Foundation, and, according to faithalwayswins.org, its mission is to “engage others in a dialogue that will encourage Faith” and “celebrate the Good in our community, our nation and our world.” From that organization stemmed SevenDays Make a Ripple, Change the World.

On Apr. 7, the SevenDays Make a Ripple, Change the World week-long challenge started, and ended on the 13th with a Faith Walk. The challenge was to perform a random act of kindness every day to spread positivity. Each day had a theme: Tuesday was Love, Wednesday was Discover, Thursday was Others, Friday was Connect, Saturday was Go, Sunday was You and Monday was Onward. Through its website, givesevendays.org, and word-of-mouth, the organization encouraged people to perform acts of kindness and to attend events such as presentations by guest speakers inspiring listeners to spread positivity.

According to givesevendays.org, SevenDays had three parts to it: Faith, Love & Song, Faith, Love & Kindness and Faith, Love & Walk. Faith, Love & Song was a songwriting competition held before the week of kindness. The organization awarded three scholarships of up to $5000 to songwriters ages 14 to 21 for songs about racial, religious and cultural equality and acceptance. The winners were announces on the 13th during the celebration after the walk. Faith, Love & Kindness was the week-long challenge to spread kind acts and Faith, Love & Walk was the peace walk to embrace diversity and common values as a society.

School psychologist Cathy Kerr has followed the Faith Always Wins organization since the tragedy. She went to the walk and participated in the SevenDays challenges.

“I really like the idea of seven days of kindness and Make a Ripple, Change the World because I think we can change the world one person at a time,” Kerr said. “I think that’s the way it happens. I don’t think it’s usually politicians or big people [that change the world] — I think it’s the person to person [interactions] that do it. [The walk] symbolizes the diversity of our culture, acceptance and love for all people, and then also a unity of walking from one place to another — kind of all together as a community.”

A week before the shooting tragedy last year, Blue Valley North junior and current Youth Board Director of Faith Always Wins Jake Goldman faced some adversity and saw some things he didn’t want to see at his school. When the shooting occurred a week later, Goldman decided something had to change and approached the Blue Valley School district with ambitious intentions. He wanted to create a walk and bring in world-renowned speakers like Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama. He ended up getting in touch with Mindy, and they collaborated with about 30 other volunteers to create the SevenDays project.

“What we’re trying to do is bring awareness to different religions, cultures, and races within the community,” Goldman said. “And be accepting of each other because, in all honesty, we aren’t that different. And that’s something that we’re trying to have students and community members learn. One of our mottos within the whole project is we’re trying to be the ripple that changes the world and we’re trying to make this project be able to expand elsewhere to other places that need this type of healing.”

Sophomore Asia Humphrey was best friends with Underwood. Last year, during another commemorative walk, she said it felt like every two minutes people were checking on how she was doing , even if they didn’t know her very well. She contemplated not going to the Faith Walk this year because it would be too much to handle but then decided to attend.

“The walk contributes by remembrance,” Humphrey said. “Like we don’t want everyone to be like, ‘Oh yeah it’s just April 13th — whatever, it’s just another day,’ because it’s not. It’s the day that a million people were shattered and a million people came together and a million people just met each other without even knowing each other and [promoted] acceptance with all different kinds of religions and ethnicities and races.”

Each day was specifically designed by part of the Youth Board of Faith Always Wins to change the participant’s behavior with different things to do, events to attend, suggestions for activities and more, all relayed through their website. Though it commemorates the victims of the shooting, the ultimate aim of SevenDays was to leave a more lasting impact on the community.

Sophomore Niya McAdoo heard about the event through Diversity Club. She wanted to take this chance to remember the people who lost their lives and spread love. She said that if the tragedy had happened to one of her friends or herself, she would have wanted people to remember her and turn her death into a positive movement. McAdoo also attended the walk and participated in the challenge.

“We can take negative situations like this and turn it into positive things and spread awareness and acceptance for everybody,” McAdoo said. “[This event is important because it shows] everybody being able to come together and being able to say ‘We may be different but we’re still accepting of each other, it’s okay’”.

The Youth Board of Faith Always Wins reached out to over 22 school districts throughout the area. Each of these districts received information about the event and was left to distribute it on its own. So far, SevenDays has made a footprint in the community, especially impacting elementary and middle schools. While the themes have been on the announcements at Southwest, other schools decided to make a permanent change. In the Blue Valley school district alone, 22 schools did something with their curriculum or changed it to go along with SevenDays.

“The youth has the ability to change the world — we’re the next generation, and I feel like this is a project that will not only bring our community together, but will make us stronger and make us look past our differences,” Goldman said. “The whole notion that we have in Johnson County is we’re stuck in a bubble and my intention was to burst that bubble. And I want us to look past the stereotypes and just kind of unite as one.”

With the walk as the culminating event, many people draw hope from the rest of the community’s support and unity in moving on from last year’s tragedy. A pre-walk event included speakers, music and dancing while a post-walk celebration included singers, snacks and a candle-lighting ceremony.

“We have people from all over the world coming for the walk,” Humphrey said. “And it’s just unbelievable to see all the people just come together for someone that they didn’t even know just because they completely support us that much. I hope [it helps people move on]. Even if [people] didn’t know him that well, it’s nice for them to support the people that did know him. ”

SevenDays stemmed when Goldman and Mindy combined their ideas to involve the community in commemorating the shooting. With over 3,000 attendees, the walk included speakers such as Mayor of Overland Park Carl Gerlach and Mayor of Kansas City Sly James.

“The whole reason behind it was to create a lasting effect so the SevenDays of Kindness turns into forever kindness,” Goldman said. “Commit these acts on a daily basis, not just seven days. And that’s kind of what we’re trying to do this year and want to expand next year, and keep on growing and expanding within the community. So, it’s really just a mechanism, seven days, instead of just one day.”

Kerr and Humphrey were two of the many participating in SevenDays. Humphrey said it was exciting when she texted people she hadn’t before, gave random compliments and called her aunt to tell her she loved her. Kerr on the other hand, called her sister to chat, brought someone coffee and read about different religions in a newspaper.

Though Kerr said the tragedy riveted everyone last year, she said SevenDays gave people a chance to see what’s changed in a year and make a ripple to change the world.

“I think that, even if everybody just takes two seconds in one day to think about something kind or nice or doing something for someone else, I think it could change the world,” Kerr said. “Let’s not accept the bad stuff and just say, ‘It’s so bad we can’t do anything’. Let’s turn it around and say ‘What can we do?’”