Get rid of prejudice. Dream big. Choose positive influences. Speak with kindness.

These are four of five of Rachel Joy Scott's challenges. And on Wednesday, October 23, Wareham students and members of the community at large graciously accepted those challenges.

Rachel was the first victim of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shootings.

In the weeks and months after her death, Scott's family studied the 17-year-old's six journals she left behind. It was in those journals and in an essay entitled, "My Ethics, My Code of Life," that her family learned that Rachel believed, above all, in kindness, and that showing compassion could start a chain reaction of the same.

The family formed Rachel's Challenge, a nonprofit dedicated to honoring Rachel and spreading her code of ethics, hoping to start that chain reaction.

More than 19 million people have heard Rachel's story and accepted the challenges based on her writings. The Wareham Middle School PTA brought the program to students and the community on October 24 and in 2011.

In between showing news clips of the shooting coverage and its aftermath, Rachel's Challenge presenter Nasha Snipes introduced the audience to Rachel's family via photos and video clips, and elaborated on Rachel's five challenges.

To get rid of prejudice, look in your heart and look for the best in others, Snipes said. "You never know what they are going through."

Dream big. Keep lofty goals. Track your progress in a journal.

"Think outside the box," Snipes said. "As a matter of fact, throw the box away."

Choose positive influences because the decisions we make today determine the people we become, Snipes advised. And people are looking up to us.

Speak with kindness — because words can hurt or heal, Snipes noted.

As Rachel wrote: "People will never know how far a little kindness will go."

The fifth challenge, Snipes explained, is to go to the people you care about in the next three days and tell them how much they mean to you.

Snipes asked those sitting in the auditorium if they would accept that final challenge.

All hands went into the air.

"Your hands are an extension of Rachel's hands," Snipes said in thanking the audience.

And that's what continues the chain reaction.

Wareham Middle School students Leeannah Thomas and Aubree King were touched so much by the presentation they saw in school that they attended the evening event as well.

"I think it's a very good story to get out there," said Leeannah, noting that she had already seen changes in herself and fellow students following the morning presentation. "It's such an emotional thing."

Aubree concurred.

"I know I've judged people and been mean to people," she said.

After the presentation, Aubree was inspired immediately to make a change. She apologized to the people to whom she knew she hadn't been the nicest.

"They got it in the kindness of their hearts and they actually forgave me," Aubree said. "I was surprised."

And just like that, perhaps Aubree started her own chain reaction.