Rachel's Challenge - Updates

Updates

At the White House Conference on School Safety held in Washington, DC, on October 10, 2006, Craig Scott addressed the President of the United States, the U.S. Attorney General, and the Secretary of Education, saying, in part, "Kindness and compassion can be the biggest antidotes to anger and hatred, and I believe the biggest antidotes to violence. We've seen bullying stopped, incidents where a student came up with hit lists or plans to shoot up his school, and told either the speaker or told the teacher about their plans, but had a change of heart. How have we done it? We've done it with a simple story of a young girl who believed in compassion, Rachel Joy Scott. But my sister is not the only one who believes in kindness, and she's not been the only one in her brave stance against the injustice willing to stand up for the one who gets put down in school, to sit by the student that sits all alone at lunch, and to talk to or reach out to the one who is consistently ignored or made fun of. She literally has inspired millions of people to continue the chain reaction she started...".

In the aftermath of the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech massacre, Darrell and Craig Scott were interviewed on various television programs, such as Showbiz Tonight, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Fox & Friends, and Geraldo at Large, to share their thoughts about school violence and to remember Rachel Scott near the eighth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy. Craig Scott urged viewers on The Oprah Winfrey Show two days later to refrain from too much focus on the shooter, saying "I have found students that actually idolize the two shooters at Columbine... We've focused on my sister, who's so compassionate and kind. And from that, that's the opposite of that anger and hatred."

On April 20, 2009, the tenth anniversary of the Columbine shootings, Darrell Scott told NBC interviewer Natalie Morales on the Today show, "We've seen a lot of lives changed from her story and our program, Rachel's Challenge, has touched literally 13 million lives over the last ten years". He said that from September 2008 to April 2009, his organization received 105 emails from teens dissuaded from suicide because of attending a Rachel's Challenge program. In a separate interview aired the same day, Craig Scott told Morales that, "I meet a lot of hurting students out there and I share with them my hurtful story, but I'm not just carrying a sob story around ... I'm trying to share with them some of the things that I learned to get through it and to be a better person because of it". As of 2008, Craig Scott has spoken to more than one million people in making appearances for Rachel's Challenge, while pursuing a career in filmmaking. He hopes to produce inspirational films and is on the board of directors of the American Screenwriters Association.