Photo by Ryan Gladstone / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Larry Scott presents Rachel’s Challenge to an assembly for Spring Garden Middle School and Benton High School students at Benton on Monday. Rachel’s Challenge is a national program based on the life of Rachel Scott, the first student killed at Columbine High School.

Rachel Scott saw a girl sitting alone in the Columbine High School cafeteria.

So she and her two friends left their table to join the girl.

Two student gunmen killed Rachel and 12 others at the Littleton, Colo., school on April 20, 1999.

Rachel died without knowing how she affected the girl at lunch.

“That girl has said, ‘My worst day at school became my best day at school all because of Rachel’s kindness and compassion,’” Larry Scott, Rachel’s uncle, told Spring Garden Middle School and Benton High School students Monday at Benton.

Mr. Scott was delivering the message behind Rachel’s Challenge — an initiative that has become the nation’s largest school assembly program.

The program uses examples from Rachel’s life and diaries to promote her mission. Rachel believed acts of kindness, like befriending the loner in the lunchroom, could prevent violence and change the world for the better.

With video and Mr. Scott’s words, the program mixed the pain of tragedy and the power of Rachel’s mission.

It left some students motivated to change.

“There are always kids sitting at lunch by themselves. This makes me want to go up and sit with them,” said Benton junior Kiefer Helser.

After pausing, he continued, “Actually, I am going to go sit with them now.”

Rachel once stood up to two boys who were bullying another boy, Mr. Scott said. That boy who was being picked on said he decided to ditch his suicide plan after Rachel reached out to him.

“It all makes you realize that a little bit of happiness can go a long way,” Benton junior Amanda Trout said after the assembly.

Local parent Diana Slawson worked to bring the program to St. Joseph. She learned about the program at a PTA conference in Columbia, Mo.

More school assemblies are planned at Central and Lafayette high schools this week. The public is invited to a 6 p.m. assembly today at Central.

Ms. Slawson is still raising funds to cover the nonprofit’s $10,000 visit. To donate, contact her at 233-0627.

Benton athletic director Mike Ziesel could hear the program’s impact on the students. “They are never that quiet during an assembly,” he said.