Illinois School for the Deaf hosts kindness fair in downtown Jacksonville
Downtown Jacksonville became a classroom for kindness as ISD students handed out free food, collected donations and showed how inclusion can work in public.
Schools looking for a practical way to improve climate and student connection could take a cue from downtown Jacksonville, where Illinois School for the Deaf students and the school’s SEL Committee turned the public square into a working lesson in outreach. The Kindness Activity Fair ran Monday from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., with students and passersby moving between activities, free hotdogs and popcorn, and a donation drive built around service instead of spectacle.
The event reached beyond campus walls in a way that made the lesson visible to the whole community. Hosted by the Illinois School for the Deaf SEL Committee and students, the fair supported Morgan County Animal Control and the Jacksonville Food Pantry, with collection requests that were specific and local: Purina Dog Chow, Meow Mix and Tidy Cats litter for animal control, and mac and cheese, peanut butter, jelly, canned soup, dry pasta, Hamburger Helper and cereal for the pantry. That mix of food, supplies and public interaction gave the fair a concrete civic purpose in downtown Jacksonville.
For Illinois School for the Deaf, the setting matched the school’s broader mission. Founded in 1839, ISD sits on a 50-acre campus in Jacksonville and serves children ages 3 to 22, including day programming for students who live within 25 miles of the city. The school says its work is centered on helping deaf and hard-of-hearing students reach their full potential in a nurturing environment that supports them academically, socially, physically and emotionally. Putting kindness activities in the downtown square turned that mission into something the public could see and join.
The impact was measurable, too. A social-media repost of the event said students donated 188 pounds of food, along with a supply of dog and cat food for Morgan County Animal Control, and raised a combined $239 in monetary donations. That kind of result matters for local schools trying to build belonging: it showed students practicing communication, confidence and community engagement while helping two agencies that serve Morgan County residents every day. ISD’s own FY24 report also showed a broader pattern of outreach, including 49 participants in community sign language classes, 725 participants in online presentations and conferences, 38 training events and 72 advocacy and consultation sessions.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
