As it goes with young people, they learn by watching the example others set for them.
Bellbrook High School freshman Ember-Marie Day learned by the example her grandfather set by visiting people in nursing homes.
Day said her grandfather, Tom Franz, used to visit his mother (her great-grandmother, Mary Weller) in a nursing home up in Napoleon, Ohio. While doing that every day, he noticed there were plenty of people who did not get visitors.
So he spoke to the nurses, then chatted with the residents, and instead of just visiting his mother on a daily basis, he visited all sorts of new friends, too.
“He’d ask them when their birthdays were, what their favorite food was,” Day said. “Every day for two years, he’d go and visit them.”
Sadly, Day’s grandfather passed away in 2020. But the mark he left on her with his kindness lives on.
“I think if he knew I was doing this, he’d really like it,” Day said.
Day created the Happier Project because of the mark her grandfather left, but she also was inspired by the Eagle Outreach class when she was in 7th grade at Bellbrook Middle School.
While many times that's a one-and-done scenario – where students learn about giving back to the community and then move on to the next trimester – Day took it as an opportunity to continue her work. She made an in-school website to solicit students to help color pictures to give to residents of nursing homes. In eighth grade, she took it school-wide.
This year, she reached back out to BMS Principal Jenna Hill to spread the word once again. In total, more than 360 colored pages were handed out, which included all of her outreach efforts. Day passed pages out at places children Trick or Treat, asking them to help, too. Now in high school Day said it isn’t as easy to get her peers to assist in coloring as she would have liked.
“It’s difficult to get people to listen to you when you are a freshman,” she said. “Last year as an 8th grader I had more influence.”
The freshman knows how important it is to brighten the day of others, saying even at her lowest point – during the COVID pandemic – she knew how important it was to feel some semblance of family and love to make her, well, happier.
The Happier Project isn’t the only project Day participates in to help give back.
Though she calls them Beta outreaches, she has plenty of ideas of how to continue giving back to those who need it.
And all of them started with the simple thought of just trying to make someone happier.