In the 1990s, the school’s that participated in the “Take a Video Home” program saw a significant decrease in bullying. It is also remarkable to note that the influence of the program extended outside the classroom to the benefit of the community as a whole.
Across the country, school kids formed their own Buttercream Gangs and freely and voluntarily performed service work for those in need.
In fact, two 12-year-old girls in Springfield, Oregon were awarded the city’s “Student Humanitarian Award” for organizing 17 individual 6-12 year old neighborhood kids into a local Buttercream Gang that mowed, raked, weeded, and performed other acts of service for free all summer long for widows and single moms in their neighborhood.
In a poor logging community in Washington, two students in foster care watched a “Take a Video Home” VHS tape. The first, an angry young girl, totally failing in school and headed nowhere fast, turned her life around to graduate as class Valedictorian 12 months later.
In the same town, a younger boy, also angry and in foster care, who was mean and bullied others, watched the video he took home over and over, slowly recognizing his behavior was hurting others and declaring to his step-parents he wasn’t going to hurt anybody anymore.
The principal of an inner city school in Cleveland, Ohio didn’t want to do the program because the kids in the film were not of the same ethnicity as his students. He was asked to show the Buttercream Gang to a single class of 5th graders, and after he saw the impact it had on the kids, he eagerly had the school participate.
One of the students took The Buttercream Gang home and watched it over the weekend. He wanted to keep the video (it cost just $5.00 to keep), but his single mother, who was working two jobs to make ends meet, told him she couldn’t even afford $5.00 and that he had to return it to the school. When she got home Monday night, she found her boy watching The Buttercream Gang. She patiently explained the importance of honesty and that he had committed in bringing the video home to return it so he needed to do that tomorrow.
When she got home Tuesday night, he was watching The Buttercream Gang again. She made it clear to him in no uncertain terms that he had to return it the next day, and of course, when she got home, he was watching it again. However, this time, instead of getting even more angry, she got “mom smart” and asked him why. His answer shocked her. He explained that he was supposed to be initiated into one of the street gangs in Cleveland on the next Saturday, but after watching the film, he knew he didn’t have to. She called and shared this story with tears of gratitude streaming down her face.
The impact of the “Take a Video Home” program wasn’t limited to just school kids. A father in Iowa, who was separated from his wife and heading for divorce, took his son for his visitation. When he brought him back to his wife, the boy begged him to stay and watch this movie he had gotten called The Buttercream Gang. The father, after watching the video, knew he wanted a relationship with his son like the father in The Buttercream Gang had with the hero of the film. He told us the video helped him realize how important his family was and how insignificant and easily fixed the reasons for the separation were, and he and his wife stayed together.
Sharon Baker received thousands of calls telling her of the impact of the “Take A Video Home” program, and from it, came her desire to find a way share these positive, uplifting movies with every child and every family. Of course, as we already noted, the program was too difficult to administer and too expensive to continue, but Sharon never lost her desire to make a bigger impact.