Tiny Girl Big Dreams brings friendship benches to inspire hope

NEW CONCORD, Ohio- One tiny Florida girl is using her big dreams to spread hope to the younger generation.

15 year old Acacia Woodley was born with a hand deformity. At the age of 11, she was bullied by one of the popular girls in school. Instead of fighting back, she chose to take a different approach.

“Tiny girl big dreams is this company I started when I was 10 years old and the general idea is to spread kindness around any community, potentially world wide. Just so particularly students and younger people that are going to be our future generations are learning how to be kinder, ” said Woodley.

With two seats, bright colors and filled with encouraging words, the friendship bench was created as a safe place for any student in need of a friend. This idea came from her personal experience with her bully, Woodley learned that it’s not only the ones being bullied that need help, but also the bullies themselves.

“Through this kind of situation of finding out why she was mean to me and that she had her own struggles at home, I quickly discovered that it wasn’t just the people being bullied that but it included everyone including those being mean that needed a place to go to talk about what they were going through,” said Woodley.

These friendship benches provided by Big Sandy Superstore, can be found at Larry Miller Intermediate school, Tri- Valley Middle School and Dresdon Elementary school.