 First day I took office in 2017, the first resolution that the City Council passed connected us with other cities around the planet through the International Charter for Compassion. That resolution named us and invites us into an ethical identity, Compassionate San Antonio. It claimed our community was already compassionate and challenges us to be even more compassionate. To become more of anything of true worth requires commitment and learning. I began with myself in my office. We were some of the first of San Antonians to take the Compassionate Integrity Training. This institute was also the first among all of the 450 compassionate cities. The question for Compassion Education was and remains, where do we begin? For the last year plus, the Compassionate Essay Action Team struggled with this question. Do we begin with children, teachers, universities? When COVID struck, the answer became very clear. We started at all levels. The team is a highly skilled group of volunteer San Antonians, university educators, administrators, community organizers, communications, metrics and tech gurus all committed to the bottom line basic of Compassion, the ethic of reciprocity, also known as the Golden Rule in all the world religions, to treat others in ways we wish to be treated ourselves. The intensive training includes Compassion Skills for self, others and in systems, all systems, government, education, health, our own bodies, our family, name any system and Compassion Skills are applicable. The San Antonio Compassionate Institute is year long and continues through the 2021 academic year. Institute fellows began working together last night as cohorts within their own institutions, supporting each other, creating opportunities, strategizing the integration of compassion with their institution systemically. The institute is not necessarily the application of a curriculum. It is the strengthening of compassion as a systemic and culturally planted ethic. Providing and teaching is how the institute began this past June. The training curriculum is the same as Mayor Nuremberg and others who participated in about two and a half years ago. The curriculum is known as Compassionate Integrity Training from the Center for Compassion Integrity and Secular Ethics out of Life University in Atlanta. The desire is now more than ever before and needed more than ever before in our lifetime at least to recognize this interconnectedness, this interdependent collaborative approach that we've seen in San Antonio over the past number of weeks. This project gives me hope, this initiative gives me hope not only for young people but for everybody. We need to see cities like San Antonio doing it, walking the talk first and not so much without fear but actually recognizing potentially what could go wrong but instead of saying no, we won't do it, walking ahead and feeling and owning that realistic fear but doing it anyway. And for me that's what courage, that's what bravery is and also that's what true compassion is. I truly believe that right now in history, I'm a U.S. history teacher so I look at things in the perspective of history. We are at a crossroads between compassion and understanding and hate and bigotry and that's what makes this Compassion Institute programs like this extremely important because we see how a social, political, and economic system that lacks compassion affects families, how it affects our students, how it affects our own close relatives and is through having compassion we can acknowledge that, understand that, and look for ways to change it. The Compassion Institute has given me the skills to help foster that compassion among my students. Something that I always say in my class is if you can make someone's life a little bit better, why wouldn't you? Because we're all living in a hard life. We can all acknowledge that life is hard but we don't have to be alone in this hard life. We don't have to be isolated in this hard life. If we have that compassion, that understanding, that shared collectiveness as human beings we can come together to form something beautiful to push us to greater heights. In the end we are family and we are what makes this city strong and if we do not lift each other up then we're just breaking each other down and that is not what we want. And so is it going to be hard to continue pushing forward to compassion in a system that lacks compassion? Yes, it will be hard but another thing I say is the mountain may be high but the cause is righteous. Hi everyone, I'm delighted to share my experience as a participant of the Niagara World Compassionate Institute in San Antonio. My name is Viri Carrizales and I stand here today as an immigrant and as the co-founder and CEO of M-Schools. M-Schools is an immigrant-led nonprofit organization that partners with K-12 educators to transform our schools into safe, welcoming, inclusive places for undocumented students and families. Working as an organization, working at the intersection of immigration and education, compassion has been our compass. I came to this country when I was 11 years old with my family and navigating K-12 as an undocumented student I experienced discrimination, experienced xenophobia. I remember feeling othered and unwelcome and in those moments the words from Maya Angelou resonate so much with me. I've learned that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel. I still remember those emotions and those feelings and I have vowed to myself that through my work at M-Schools I hope to you create the world that my parents dreamed for me, that every parent dreams for their child or for their children. A world where our immigration status does not determine our worth. Participating in the Compassionate Institute has highlighted for me how compassion and its true form, recognizing the needs of others, showing empathy and taking action, can provide the principles or the foundation that we need to not just transform ourselves but to transform the world around us. And the amazing thing is that compassion is something that we can do every day in our daily lives. So I want you to ask yourself, when was the last time that you practiced compassion, that you cared and did something for someone or for others? And when was the last time that you practiced compassion, that you cared and did something for you? I hope that immigrants who make San Antonio home and those who are passing us by, never forget how the people in San Antonio made them feel. Never forget how welcome and embraced it felt by your city. And I hope that they never forget that in the midst of so much pain and rejection, San Antonio is a place that they can always call home. At San Antonio, we have been fortunate to be in a city where people rise up in times of challenge. The most clear example of that to me was the first experiences with the doubled food bank food lines, which happened literally overnight when the pandemic really gripped everyone and we had massive unemployment. The food bank lines doubled and there were those famous aerial photographs. I went out to one of the coordinated drives and I'm not kidding you, the cars were outnumbered by the volunteers. The same is true whenever we have a massive blood drive downtown. But I like to think of smaller acts of compassion that mean a lot. Every time I see someone walking down the street wearing a face mask, I think that that person is acting out of compassion because it's truly a sign of respect. It's protecting the other person, not necessarily yourself. Everyone who comes into the city, they have to be part of the culture and it means that we're constantly trying to take this philosophy of compassion out to our communities and as leaders, as members of the Institute, we're now ambassadors for that movement and have the responsibility to take that training.