Mumbai: Youth icon and actress Ananya Panday is furthering her mission to foster empathy and compassion among young people through the launch of a transformative new initiative—the Kindness Curriculum, created by her digital social responsibility platform So Positive in collaboration with the non-profit Slam Out Loud.
Rooted in art-based learning, the Kindness Curriculum aims to empower children across India with core values of empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence, using creative mediums such as storytelling, poetry, and visual arts. The initiative is designed to turn emotional literacy into an engaging, relatable, and actionable part of early education.
Ananya Panday plays a central role in the curriculum, guiding children through interactive learning modules inspired by her own life experiences. Her voice and presence help bring authenticity and relatability to the lessons, reinforcing the message that kindness is more than just a virtue—it’s a critical life skill.
The curriculum is being distributed through Slam Out Loud’s Jijivisha Fellowship and Arts for All Program, reaching over 2.5 lakh children across Indian schools. To ensure accessibility beyond classrooms, it is also available on So Positive’s YouTube channel, and efforts are underway to include it on the Government of India’s DIKSHA Portal for wider educational integration.
Speaking on the initiative, Ananya Panday said, “Kindness has always been at the heart of everything we do at So Positive. It’s something I deeply believe in—not just as an idea, but as a way of life. I truly feel that if we can instil kindness in kids from a young age, it becomes second nature to them as they grow up. That’s why the Kindness Curriculum is so close to my heart. With everything going on in the world, I feel an even stronger need to help build a generation that’s more empathetic, emotionally aware, and simply… kind.”
At a time when social-emotional learning (SEL) is increasingly seen as critical to holistic education, the Kindness Curriculum arrives as a timely response to the emotional and digital challenges faced by today’s children. With its creative, empathetic approach, the initiative hopes to inspire a new generation of young Indians to lead with kindness—online and offline.
