We’re excited to announce the winner of our May, 2026 Matt Kurtz Kindness Grant for her wonderful kindness project. The grant was given by Matt’s Kindness Ripples On (MKRO), an organization that encourages acts of kindness by helping people who have ideas for kindness projects but lack the funding to follow through on those ideas.
Congratulations to Nisha Evangelista.
She will receive a grant to help fund her acts of kindness project!
The Kindness of Being Seen
Nisha Evangelista (Hackensack, NJ) said, “There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with being a teenager who is struggling and has nowhere to go to express their feelings. You sit with it in class, at lunch, on the bus ride home. You watch other people seem fine and wonder what’s wrong with you. You don’t tell anyone because you don’t have the words, or because you’re scared, or because the one person you almost told is struggling, too.
I grew more and more acquainted with that feeling as I grew older. So did most of the teens I grew up with. Statistically, youth are facing a severe loneliness epidemic, with 17–24% of teens and young adults reporting high levels of loneliness.
What I’ve learned through my own hard moments, through watching friends go silent, through the crisis moments that hit closer than I ever expected is that the difference between a teenager who gets through it and one who doesn’t often comes down to one thing: whether someone showed up. A peer. A safe space. A single honest conversation that said you’re not alone in this.”
Nisha decided to become that someone.
She created something called The TeenSpace. I love that name, because it’s exactly what so many teens are missing, not advice, not lectures, not “fixing”… just space. Space to feel. Space to be messy. Space to not have the perfect words.
The TeenSpace offers free events for middle and high school students in underserved communities, where creativity becomes the doorway into the conversation. Sometimes young people can’t fully say what they’re feeling out loud, but they can draw it, write it, hum it, put it into a lyric or a brushstroke or a single journal entry that finally lets it out.
No pressure. No spotlight. Just, expression. And woven into all of that are conversations, gentle ones, honest ones. The kind that don’t start with “What’s wrong with you?” but instead say, “Hey… you’re not the only one.”
That’s what The TeenSpace nonprofit is about. It’s not just an event, it’s a moment where a teenager might realize, maybe for the first time, I’m not alone in this.
Nisha with Ryan O’Keefe – Community Resources Coordinator at Bergen’s Promise
Here’s what I find so powerful: these conversations are guided by peers. Teens who have been there; who know what it feels like to sit in that quiet and wonder if anyone else understands.
Sometimes the most powerful thing in the world isn’t advice – it’s recognition. It’s someone saying, without even needing the perfect words, “I see you.”
This is the kind of kindness that doesn’t always make headlines. There’s no big, dramatic moment. No before-and-after photo. But make no mistake, this is life-changing work.
Because the difference between a teenager who gets through a hard season and one who doesn’t often comes down to one thing: Did someone show up? Because of Nisha, the answer for more teens will be “Yes.”
Somewhere, in a room filled with art supplies, music and quiet courage, a teenager will take a small step out of that heavy silence.
And that step? That’s a ripple.
This grant is given in honor of Matt Kurtz, (1985-2017), a young man whose personal philosophy was to live an honorable, compassionate and non-judgmental life. To give for the sake of giving, to expect nothing in return, to be aware of the world around him and to step in to help others without being asked whenever he saw the need. Matt believed in the ripple effect of a simple act of kindness – like a pebble dropped in water, it goes on and on. You can find out more about how Matt lived his life, examples of his many acts of kindness, big and small, and why this grant was created on MattsKindnessRipplesOn.com.
