Chun Rosenkranz is the founder of the I’ll Be There Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering and uplifting humans through the transformative conduit of kindness. Chun personally experienced the life changing magic of kindness nine years ago while serving a one year jail sentence due to his addiction to prescription pills. He describes this period of incarceration as “The lowest point of my life. I was sleeping on the floor of a jail cell in an orange jumpsuit. I had no self worth. I had no belief that my life had value. Essentially, I had absolutely no hope.”
Several months into serving his sentence, the seventh Harry Potter book was released. Chun is obsessed with the wizarding world and could not wait to read the final chapter in the series. Strangely, incarcerated folks are forbidden from receiving hardcover books. Knowing how deeply Chun loved this story, a college friend named Jeannie went to Kinkos and xeroxed all 759 pages and sent them into the jail in two hundred page installments. She even made a color copy of the cover.
This singular act of unconditional kindness completely changed the trajectory of Chun’s life. He began to believe there was hope and that he had worth. Since being released from jail, Chun has made it his mission to transmit this hope to others through acts of kindness. He pursued both sobriety and education and graduated with his Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University. For the last two years, he has worked with adolescents incarcerated on Rikers Island, advocating for their rights to drug treatment and therapy. Chun believes that everyone has a story and that every life has value.
The I’ll Be There Project is Chun’s way of helping people access empathy and connection through kindness. It is a way to operationalize hope. It is gratitude to in action. Chun says, “I have been shown a kindness and grace that I will never be able to repay. For as many breaths as I have left in this realm, I have made it my mission to share that kindness with the world.”