Something BIG happened at YHS! Wendy Williams Watt, mother of Rachel Watt ’12, brought the Big Love Ball to YHS for the first student-run assembly of the year. A Vancouver designer and proud Yorkie parent, Wendy Williams Watt, created the original ball and placed it in her studio window to beckon the open hearts of those who walked by. The Big Love Ball soon became an invited guest to weddings, celebrations and anywhere people feel the love. The Big Love Ball is now sent all over the world as a symbol of inclusion, connection and love.
Wendy spoke to our students about how love can be shared through inclusion in our community and in the broader world. She also illustrated how this can be accomplished through small gestures of love, kindness and inclusivity in our own community such as welcoming others into their circles of friends (.ie. inviting others to sit with them at lunch) and the value of giving others the benefit of the doubt.
Following assembly, students were invited to sign the Big Love Ball and to send messages of love to the girls at The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. These messages, along with the signed Big Love Balls, will be sent to the girls in Oprah’s school as a gesture of love, kindness and inclusivity.
The Big Love Ball is a social project intended to compel people to send the Big Love Balls to places they’ve never been, events they cannot attend or to friends they’ve never met. It is a project that promotes a social conscience and creates opportunities to connect with others around a universal theme that unites us all — love. The Big Love Ball gave our girls the opportunity to think about these important concepts and to connect with other young girls, across the world, and let them know that they are thinking of them and sending them love. What a truly fitting way to start our year and demonstrate our motto, “Not for Ourselves Alone”!