Rob Chursinoff

Saving the descendants of Eleanor Roosevelt’s monkeys. A “So You Think You Can Dance” finalist teaching kids in the foster care system to use dance, movement, and creative arts as a medium for health and well-being. Spreading Christmas cheer to kids in Peru. Creating a lit bookfest in the most diverse city in the U.S.

At first glance, these initiatives might seem at odds with each other, but if you look closer you’ll see that they all embody simple acts of kindness for those most in need in their communities—human or otherwise.

Plus, each project has received a $500 financial boost thanks to the Upworthy Kindness Fund—a collaboration between Upworthy and GoFundMe that celebrates and amplifies everyday acts of kindness.

Through the end of 2021, you too can tell Upworthy how your GoFundMe is making a difference in your community for a chance to receive $500 for your project and a shout-out on Upworthy.

So far, more than 120 people have received a financial boost from the Kindness Fund. Meet the latest batch of winners:

1. Fostering Dreams

Throughout Melanie Buttarazzi’s dance career, she has been a finalist on “So You Think You Can Dance” and has worked with Jennifer Lopez, Pharrell, Pitbull and Ne-Yo. For her, dancing is strength and offers freedom. These are some of the core tenets of Melanie’s nonprofit Fostering Dreams Project. The organization partners with school districts to bring a comprehensive curriculum designed to enrich the lives of foster youth both academically and socially.

Since 2018, the Fostering Dreams Project has explored the therapeutic use of dance, movement, and creative arts improve the grades, self-esteem and behavior of more than 1,000 students in 25 schools. But now, with COVID-19, many school budgets have been reduced.

Melanie’s GoFundMe for Fostering Dreams will allow kids in foster care to continue to have a healthy way to release the stress, anxiety and depression that many battle every day.

Image courtesy of Fostering Dreams Project

2. Christmas for Kids in Peru

Biancha Medina believes in “una Navidad para todos,” which translates to “a Christmas for everyone.” But in many parts of the world, including Peru, kids don’t get to experience the joys of the Christmas season.

With the help of Upworthy’s Kindness Fund, Biancha’s fundraiser will bring gifts and supplies to kids and their families living in extreme poverty in Peru’s agricultural Incahuasi district.

In partnership with Lions Club International, Biancha aims to spread Christmas joy and address the basic needs of more than 400 children in many more villages throughout Peru.

Image courtesy of Biancha Medina

3. Let’s Build a Monkey Sanctuary!

Seventy years ago, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt imported tiny vervet monkeys from Africa for biomedical research in Florida. Nearly a dozen of them escaped, and in the ensuing decades they procreated—as monkeys do—and settled around Dania Beach.

But the monkeys remain wild and, as such, face risks due to human interaction. Deborah Williams, organizer of the Dania Beach Vervet Project, writes on its GoFundMe page, “We’ve lost many monkeys over the years to painful electrocutions, car collisions, and wounds due to possible snaring.”

And because they’re not a native species to Florida, the monkeys are not entitled to proper veterinary care. The best solution is to build a 3.5-acre sanctuary that would reduce human interaction in an urban environment and allow the monkeys to live peacefully and injury-free.

Image courtesy of the Dania Beach Vervet Project

4. BIPOC Bookfest

Journalists and writers of color have come together to form the BIPOC Bookfest in Houston, Texas, with a mission to ensure that people’s reading experiences are, as they put it, “a little more diverse, and a lot more lit.”

The two-day festival in what is one of the country’s most diverse cities will celebrate books by Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian American, Pacific Islander and other marginalized groups’ authors. A vital aim of the festival will be to combat low literacy rates in Harris County.

The festival is currently raising funds to pay for venue rental, artist fees, book giveaways and other logistics—all crucial in making the event come alive in Spring 2022.

Image courtesy of BIPOC Book Fest

Do you have a GoFundMe or an idea for one that helps your community or the planet in some way?

Through the end of 2021, we want to hear about projects that make a difference—and should your project qualify, we’d be proud to support your efforts with a $500 grant to your fundraiser!

For questions and more information, please check out our FAQs and the Kindness Toolkit for resources on how to start your own kindness fundraiser.

Ask about Dave Van de Mark in the communities bordering Redwood National & State Parks, and many people will tell you that the seventy-nine-year-old photographer is a living legend.

In June of 1963, as a fresh-faced twenty-year-old, Dave traveled from Southern California to work at a sawmill in Humboldt County. That summer dramatically changed his life and set Dave on a path that helped establish one of America's most beloved national parks.

"On only my second day on the job, I inquired as to where the trees being milled came from," Dave says. "I was quickly told I shouldn't ask such questions!"

Intrigued by his co-workers' evasive responses, Dave began looking for his own answers.

Photo credit Dave Van de Mark

"I explored like crazy, gaining strength as I hiked very long distances....I found extensive areas outside the existing state parks that were beautiful. I also saw them being logged rather brutally and I didn't like it."

A series of pivotal events further strengthened Dave's resolve to save the old-growth forests. He began hearing about the discovery of some of the tallest redwoods near Orick, California, which prompted discussions in the community for a national park. At the same time, he'd decided to take up photography and began documenting his long hikes through the forest. He also attended a meeting with some of the area's most active conservationists who took him under his wing. "Lifelong friendships developed on the spot!" Dave says.

Photo credit Dave Van de Mark

According to a GoFundMe campaign for Dave, he trespassed on private timber land, chartered airplanes to fly over clear cuts, slept on stream banks, and walked over a thousand miles to capture over 5,000 photographs.These photos of redwood destruction were sent all around the world and began raising much needed awareness that the old-growth forests were rapidly disappearing, and that more parks needed to be created.

"As soon as the timber companies knew the efforts to create a park were gaining steam," Dave says, "so were their efforts to log and impact places we were pushing for. They said only a small buffer was needed around the newly discovered tallest trees. That, coupled with almost complete opposition to a 'grand' park by local media and government, meant we faced virtually total opposition locally."

Increased notoriety came with increased risk for Dave. "I was really well known and received some verbal threats right to my face at a public hearing, and was often worried about being harmed arriving late at night to my isolated little home."

By then, nearly 90% of the redwood old-growth had been cut down. So, despite the threats, Dave and his fellow conservationists knew something more urgent had to be done. With help from university professors, Dave collected data on the scientific and aesthetic value of the redwoods. Thanks to the Sierra Club and national papers like the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times, this information, coupled with Dave's photos, were able to reach a much larger audience.

Public support grew quickly. Over the next two years Dave and his team participated in all Senate and House hearings regarding redwood conservation, and ensured that congressional members could see the destruction with their own eyes. It all paid off. After years of immense effort, Redwoods National Park was established in 1968.

Photo credit Dave Van de Mark

Now, at seventy-nine, the legendary activist wants to revisit and photograph the areas he helped protect. And this GoFundMe will help him realize this dream.

"I have been back to areas heavily impacted by logging and that is precisely the reason for my "Fifty Years Later Project" – to allow me to have the ability and the equipment to visit and record the beautiful changes that have taken place over a half-century, before I'm too old and unable to do it. It is very heartening to see places that were eroding so badly and threatening the tallest trees, now stabilizing."

"Dave was instrumental in establishing the park, and continues to help us decades later with his photo project," says Steve Mietz, Superintendent of Redwood National and State Parks.

Christine Walters, an administrative assistant at RNSP, echoes that sentiment. "Without Dave Van de Mark...it's very possible there would never have been a Redwood National Park."

Unfortunately, Dave is struggling to find the resources to complete his dream project. His friend Ted Humphrey, who started the GoFundMe, writes "Now it is time for us to give back and thank Dave for his conservation and protection of the redwood forest. This project is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to show, through the eyes of the photographer that helped protect it, what 50 years of conservation can do at Redwood National & State Parks."

Photo credit Dave Van de Mark

When asked what advice Dave has for those fighting to save and protect old growth forests today, he offers, "Just persevere and don't ever compromise your values and be as bold as you can be."

For more information and to help Dave Van de Mark complete his life's work of documenting the forests he helped protect, please visit his GoFundMe.

Do YOU have an idea for a fundraiser that could make a difference? Upworthy and GoFundMe are celebrating ideas that make the world a better, kinder place. Visit upworthy.com/kindness to join the largest collaboration for human kindness in history and start your own GoFundMe.