F. Cecil Grace Foundation

Operation: Positive Role Model

In beginning this program, Cecil and Boo hoped to create a school environment in which students are honored and recognized by other students for acts of kindness. Instead falling into the pattern of giving attention to incidences of violenve and bullying, the Grace's flipped the coin, to glamorize honorable, upstanding behavior.

The key to Operation: Positive Role Model lies in its structure: a committee of students work together to evaluate nominations made by other students. Parents, teachers and other authority figures are not part of the decision making process. Once all the nominees have been considered, the finalists are selected and each is honored with a $1,000 scholarship at an end-of-the-year banquet.

At first, the student-only concept engendered some skepticism -- many wondered how middle school students could nominate and honor each other for good deeds without turning the affair into a popularity contest. Cecil and Boo persisted, insisting that students not only should be at the helm, but must be for the program to achieve its desired affect. If adults were to intervene, the Grace's argued, Operation: Positive Role Model would be worse than a popularity contest -- it would be a teacher's pet contest. Unglamorous to boot!

In the future, the F. Cecil Grace Foundation hopes to broaden the scope of Operation: Positive Role Model to a national program in which every school would participate and reward good behavior.