Please Be Kind: Ken Engelman’s new push for a timeless ideal

Ken Engelman considers himself a serial volunteer, but he wasn’t always that way.

It started when he decided to adopt a dog. A puppy named Jersey Girl.

“My wife bought her dog food that she didn’t like, so we donated it to the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter in Branford,” he recalls. “I happened to meet one of their commission members named Eunice Lasalle, and she just put the bug in my ear.”

That conversation snowballed. Engelman ran for a position on their board and won but after a few meetings, he realized he wasn’t built to talk about fundraising, he needed to be able to do something about it. So, he resigned and instead pitched an event to the board that he could help coordinate. A music festival to be held on the Branford Green.

That idea became Woofstock, a now annual event in Branford that raises thousands of dollars in donations of both money and supplies.

And from there, the ball just kept picking up speed. Engelman helped organize other charity events, each with a novel theme he believed would draw more attention and excitement than a spaghetti dinner or a raffle.

He added a hippie dog contest to Woofstock, organized the black-tie Animal Carnival at the Pine Orchard Yacht Club, and launched a rubber duck race held at the Stoney Creek Brewery to benefit the Orchard House Medical Day Center.

“I found my passion,” says Engelman, who has spent his career in corporate marketing for clients that included BMW motorcycles and Mercedes-Benz. “All of a sudden I realized I could do more good with my skills and abilities than just making these big corporate companies more money.”

These days, Engelman has added a more personal project to his plate; a sign campaign with a simple message: Please Be Kind.

One of these signs is displayed outside the Parthenon Diner in Branford. A bright red lawn sign, the motto spraypainted on with a stencil.

“I didn’t give that to him,” says Engelman, driving by. “How did that get there?”

Engelman is far from upset at this turn of events. Rather, he sees it as his message catching on and spreading. The signs are handmade by him, donated by others, and distributed around the community to anyone who wants to spread the message of kindness to their town.

“I give them to anybody for free,” he explains. “And I hope that they’re displayed in high traffic locations, strategic locations that will reach the most people driving by.”

In the trunk of his SUV is a stack of these signs waiting to find their home outside a local business or municipal building.

“I don’t have an agenda other than to try to improve civility and humanity.”

The lawn signs are Engelman’s latest personal venture attempting to inspire his community but it isn’t his first. That story begins at a coffee shop, in a corner booth at Common Grounds, across from Branford’s town hall.

Engelman was there with John “Cadillac” Saville and another friend, discussing their volunteer work – which had won each of them a Beacon Award from Shore Publishing.

“He said, it’s what we do, baby,” recalls Engelman. And that phrase stuck with him.

On the door of Common Grounds is a wide assortment of stickers but just above the handle as you enter is one that says simply “Volunteer: It’s What We Do.” Engelman’s shirt has the same logo, and his vehicle bears the same sticker.

“I had these stickers created, and I had 500 of them made. And I just started handing them out to whoever would volunteer,” he explains. “I said, please display it on your car because your car is a rolling billboard and it will spark conversations and show other people that there’s a group of people that do what we do.”

It represents his first community initiative, a Facebook group called Community Volunteers United that has since become an official non-profit. The group is small – just over 700 members – but that number to Engelman represents a growing number of people who want to help their communities but lack a good idea or knowledge of what opportunities are out there.

A person or organization can come to the page, post about an event or a need, and ask for volunteers. Member can then show their interest and hopefully end up helping out a program in need.

“There’s no promises, there’s no commitments, and there’s no guarantees,” says Engelman. “It’s simple. People put up requests for help, or a nonprofit fundraiser, or something, and people respond. It’s like a matchmaker service.”

For Engelman and his fellow serial volunteers, a page like this is important to grow the pool of people willing to pitch in and to inspire people who have perhaps considered volunteering but didn’t know where to start.

“One thing that serial volunteers realize is the same people show up and do the same work again and again when we need more people to come so we can accomplish more,” he says.

The real barrier, he believes, is that people want to volunteer. They just haven’t been asked.

“Most people just aren’t asked so they don’t think to volunteer. They don’t think to look for a nonprofit because they’re in their own world,” he argues. “But the more community thinking there will be, the more open-minded people will be to help out their neighbor or their friend in need.”

Where Community Volunteers United represents the side of Engelman that needs to be doing something active, his recent sign campaign represents the side that believes in a more passive inspiration.

The idea came to him, he says, during last year’s election season. He was volunteering at a polling location at a local school and he took notice of the various campaign signs placed around the lawn. Realizing these, and countless others, would likely be thrown out the next day when they had outlived their usefulness, he thought he might be able to find a way to extend their lives.

After all, these were small billboards that could be used to spread a very different message. So, he called a few campaign offices and asked if the signs could find their way to him instead of the trash pile.

“Next day, I received a ton of signs on my front on my driveway,” he says. “And I just started covering up their message with tape that matched the color of the sign. And then I just spray painted with a stencil.”

He’s only been at it since the start of the year, just over two months, and he says he learned a lot right at the beginning about how not to make a sign.

“My first stencil was a joke. It was hilarious.”

Despite his joke of a stencil, he still planned to use it until he went to Home Depot in East Haven to figure out what kind of paint to use. One of the employees asked him what he was doing and offered to make a brand-new stencil for him. He has made copies of the stencil in the time since but still uses that original one, handmade for him by a member of his community.

The signs have a do-it-yourself feel. The paint isn’t perfect and on many the original design is peeking through – the glossy, weather-resistant coating an imperfect canvas. But Engelman says he likes it and so do others, preferring something with human imperfections to a brand-new sign fresh from the printers. Plus, he emphasizes, you always know it is made with 100% recycled materials.

Engelman is also taking a relaxed approach to marketing this campaign, allowing the signs, word of mouth, a few social media posts, and any media coverage to do most of the work. So far, it has worked out. He’s received dozens of requests for signs from people in surrounding towns, but, at least for now, he has somewhat of a specific vision. He doesn’t necessarily want the signs only on the front lawns of family homes, he wants them where everyone can see in high-traffic areas. That is what he believes will really make the difference.

“Just 15 in strategic locations is gonna change the way Connecticut works with each other, plays with each other, neighbor to neighbor,” he says, explaining that his ultimate goal is to make this a statewide campaign.

People have generally agreed with his plan and have started to take on some of the responsibility of getting the signs placed outside these strategic locations. The “Please Be Kind” movement is growing.

“People started to give up their signs and ask business owners, can I put one there? Can I put one there?” he says. “And businesses started asking me for them. And then town people started asking for them, and the library asked for them. And so it started to take off.”

There are over 100 signs in circulation so far spanning 22 towns, with plans for a digital billboard in New Haven starting in late May. As more people come into contact with them, Engelman hopes to plant a thought in their minds about their own actions day-to-day.

“I’d like to reset people’s thinking away from being ‘go f yourself’ to ‘it’s okay,’” he says. “If somebody needs to get in front of you because they’re in a rush, it’s alright. It’s not the end of the world. That reset, I’ve heard many different stories about how it’s reset their mind and their thinking, and I’m really proud of that because that’s the goal of the signs.”

True to his entrepreneurial spirit, Engelman is already thinking of ways to expand his message to more people and more places.

His current vision: replacing the usual grocery store conveyor belt dividers with new ones modeled after his signs, still containing just the same three-word message: Please Be Kind.

“I’m speaking with the manager of Walmart in Branford,” he says, excited. “She loves the idea. Her cashiers love the idea because people are so rude to them.”

He also has meetings lined up with Stop & Shop’s corporate offices to make the pitch there and has issued a subtle challenge to other grocery chains in the region (and across the country) to do the same. Ultimately, he believes that any business supporting his campaign can only benefit from it.

“As a consumer, you have choices in where you’re gonna do business,” he challenges. “If you have one that’s supporting the community and supporting respect what’s your choice gonna be?”

Engelman also knows that he isn’t going to accomplish all his goals without a little help and is exploring ways to get others involved, lowering his responsibility and workload while expanding the reach of his message.

In February, he held his first sign-making party at a home in North Haven where a few volunteers came out to learn how to make signs of their own. Engelman taught the group how to paint or tape over the original signs and how to use a stencil and he thinks the event was a great success. He hopes to hold many more in the future.

Engelman has even branched out from his original red sign, adopting a rainbow of colored signs to correspond to each town, based on the town’s local high school sports teams. It’s all a way of connecting an otherwise disconnected community of people and show them that they have at least a few things in common.

“Communities are the DNA of American towns and cities. And community can unite based upon what they have shared, common interests, which is their home and their home environment,” he explains. “So I believe there needs to be more community. And the more people that talk about community, the more people that engage with the community, the healthier the community will be.”

But what does kindness mean to Engelman? In short, respect.

“This is my little thing. Please be kind. And I’m not asking for anything in return.”