 Good morning everyone, my name is Jeff Young and I am the chairman of the communications and marketing committee for the San Antonio Compassionate Institute 2020. I will be your moderator for this morning's press conference and we'll be introducing each of our speakers. It is my pleasure today to recognize and introduce the leaders and institute fellows who have been part of this inaugural San Antonio Compassionate Summer Institute 2020 for educators. In the midst of the challenges we are facing today, there is a sign of great hope taking place. There are seeds of compassion that have been planted, nurtured, and now taking to our institutions of education. They hold great promise of growth for our city and beyond. One of those seeds that has, it continues to be a catalyst of compassion is the honorable mayor of the great city of San Antonio, Ron Nuremberg. Welcome Mayor. Good morning everyone. Our focus today brings us hope in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the inequities that have surfaced into full view. Our lives have been disrupted at local and global levels and while our situation can be frustrating, frightening, and even depressing, signs of the potential for positive change and community growth have also emerged. We're all being challenged to display creativity, courage, and even compassion in these trying times. You may remember on the 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. The question became then, where do we begin in that commitment and learning. I began with myself in my office. We were some of the first of San Antonio's to take the compassionate integrity training. In that process, it became systematically clear that even though at compassion may sound like a soft skill set, it has very concrete outcomes. Research shows that businesses which practice compassion increase their bottom line. Extensive research also reveals that compassion decreases bullying in schools, as well as increases the body's immune system and other healing properties. The 2017 resolution calls for the provision of compassion education at all age levels and in all of our educational institutions. Our commitment brought about the first San Antonio Compassion Institute. This Institute is also the first among all of the 450 compassionate cities. This Institute will markets history specifically in our San Antonio's future. 85% of all San Antonio educational institutions are represented in participating in our Compassion Institute, including all of our colleges and universities. That's astounding. This offers stellar potential and of course stellar hope. We need compassion now more than ever. My gratitude goes to the Compassionate San Antonio team of the City Department of Human Services faith based initiative. Your collaboration made the Institute a reality. And to all the educational institutions who stepped up into this year long Institute, you have my gratitude and you make San Antonio proud. I like all of you have big hopes for the Institute's fellows and how they integrate compassion into their educational institutions. And I can't wait to see those outcomes after this 2021 academic year. Thank you all very much for being here. Thank you very much, Mayor for those words and for being a great beacon of hope for us here in San Antonio. So, thank you very much. Thank you. And now it's my pleasure to introduce another seat of compassion. This is the lead organizer of this Institute and help key. She's our faith liaison with the city of San Antonio. Good morning and Thanks Jeff to you and your communications team for making today happen and thank you Mayor for your commitment and your intentional leadership when it comes to compassion and all things San Antonio. We couldn't be doing this without you. We indicated 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 all levels pre K through college, all at once. Again, taking shape and doing so virtually stepped up the planning process. 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. We are a civic of reciprocity, also known as the golden rule in all the world religions to treat others in ways we wish to be treated ourselves. In the example of our mayor and civic leaders is that sounds something like to form policies that impact others in ways we would want ourselves and our own children to be cared for within a community. The city's migrant resource center last year during the migration search to welcome others in ways we would wish to be welcomed ourselves. And in terms of this Institute to teach and provide the solid skill set of compassion, as we would responsibly learn and achieve those skills as an actively engaged resident of San Antonio. Training and teaching is how the Institute began this past June. The training curriculum is the same as the mayor 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. Compassions occur twice a week for the last five weeks. 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 to mark this historic moment. The city through parks and rec will this fall be planting a compassion tree or Grove on each campus to mark each one as a compassionate Institute of Education. The pride and metric process as a part of the Institute with outcomes available May 2021. I hope to see you again then. Thank you. Thank you and for your great leadership and leading us into this new systemic era of compassion. Now compassion is not only spread throughout San Antonio, but has become a worldwide catalyst of change. It is my pleasure to introduce Shane O'Connor, who is from Ireland, and who has taught compassion and peace on five continents. He also was one of a number of compassionate Institute training facilitators from all over the world. So, Shane is actually coming to us from Spain. So welcome, Shane. Thank you so much. And third, third time lucky with unmuting. It's, it's, it brings some humility as well to me that this is something I've been doing for the past five and a half weeks, often not muting, unmuting myself. So, thank you for making me feel a little more relaxed. So, first of all, as a, as a global educator, and secondly as a, as a father of a young daughter and over the next few days, hopefully another young daughter, this project gives me hope. This initiative gives me hope, not only for young people, but for everybody. And secondly, just to say thank you for giving us as the CIT team, the platform today to be able to, to interact as well and, and we were so happy to be involved from the, from the get go. So the question I suppose that I'm asked to, to look at and to address is, what is the global impact, if any of this ambitious ambitious initiative. And so far, I think we could say, even conservatively there's over 5000 young or adult learners who are residents of your city, but also global citizens who will be directed directly benefiting from, from your initiative. Over 150 educators and, and those working within education will hopefully be walking and working within a, with a greater sense of resilience with tools of self cultivation for working with others and looking at systems that we all play a part in with a greater sense of agency and discernment. And so we've explored what these, these terms were, and there's also going to be many and much unintended consequences and unintended benefits from, from this training that's taken place over the past five and a half weeks, and hopefully with profound global impact. A compassionate education model like the one we're seeing here, endorsed by all those that are present here today and coordinated by the Compassionate Institute with the blessing of yourselves in the mayor's office and the city's officials. And then thankfully facilitated by ourselves within the CIT team who feel very humbled, energized and also honored to play a role in making this tremendously ambitious idea a reality. So this project and, you know, the outcome has now gained this momentum, and it's going to act as an inspiration, I believe, and we believe to other cities around the world to act now. It's acting as a front runner as a trailblazer and a model and a template to follow and adapt where needed for different parts of the world. So cities like Edinburgh, for example, which is not too far away from where I was born, are looking to make their city a compassionate and kind city as part of a world kindness movement with another 22 countries already signed up for this so far. They're looking for inspiration, and they've got it, they found it here. So we celebrate it, we highlight it and we share this with our compassionate compatriots wherever they may be in this large global village. And 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. They, and as acting as global educators ourselves, 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 with the motivation to alleviate the wish, or the motivation and the wishes to alleviate the suffering of others in not only in your city, but also beyond that. So who knows, after Edinburgh, where is the momentum going to go? The momentum is here now, the will is here now, and it can have far reaching impact, truly beyond where it actually is having the impact right now, but countering and challenging the spread of fear and poor health with the spread of compassion with resilience and discernment and hope for a double community to flourish and not language is really what we hope here. So the quote goes something like, if not us, then who, if not now, then when, and if not here in San Antonio, then where. And I believe another powerful global impact is just looking at our facilitator team, we're very fortunate and lucky to have on board, and now that we're connected with and all of this group are also connected with. So we have people from my home country, Ireland, we've Kenya, we have the UK and India and Canada and Columbia, and of course across the North America and the US and I may be even forgetting some countries there. But we also had three very young kindness ambassadors and this is what I talk about, maybe unintended consequences. We had three young kindness ambassadors who took their CIT training just last year. This was their first opportunity to facilitate. So it came from Nairobi from London and from New Delhi. And they were facilitating and part of this ambitious project, but they also had the opportunity to refine their skills, build their confidence and passion for the material but also embody the learning and its potential. And no sooner had we almost finished our training here that they had actually launched their own training CIT training program, another ambitious training program with, they launched it just last week and they received 140 applicants from across 40 countries around the world. Yesterday, they started that program and 24 participants from 14 different countries are now taking that CIT program. So in terms of global impact, I believe this may not have happened with that sense of confidence, if we didn't have the opportunity here that we've had in San Antonio, but it did happen and that training now is going on. And to conclude if I can, it's hard to get an Irish man to speak within three minutes when he's passionate about something like this, but of course we have to mention the actual impact stemming from the training to these incredibly brave and openly vulnerable educators who have jumped head first into this training. It's not because they trusted their hearts to say yes, they trusted their heads to say, why not their leadership within their institutions to say please, and, and their hands virtually to reach out and connect to greet and to get to know other educators in their own city. And also to say thank you to those who are able to provide it and we've got that great sense over the last number of days. So we'll we had people receiving it but also saying we need it. We've seen over the past five and a half challenging tough weeks where external and family circumstances could hardly be more adverse. We've seen these educators and those dedicated to education embrace compassion integrity training with immense compassion, a dignified beautiful integrity integrity for one another. And also for their students, their coworkers, their families, their wider communities in San Antonio and beyond to their neighboring cities, states over borders bridges and those suffering and feeling hardship right now throughout the world. So we see that there's no doubt in my mind at least and the rest of the team I think can reiterate this we we see, feel and create impact through the CIT global education network and that's the last thing I'll say is that we now offer. We're very proud to offer all of those alumni participants that have gone through this training membership and connection to it to a global education network, which we're very excited about, but we hope to be able to support one another as educators to plug more education into our lives into our classrooms into our staff rooms, interactions and communities. So those who wish to join the network is now open, and you'll be guided and supported to go and receive our CIT facilitator training which we're also quite excited about, which will begin on the 1st of August. You will also be supported to receive further training and guidance and materials from global partners like the likes of the C learning, which is a social emotional ethical learning from Emory University, working with educators and students from K through 12 or other partners think equal, who are working with educators of the younger age groups and three years old to six years old, working with education for equity. Or if it's simply a case that you want to stay in contact with your set with this group in community with educators throughout the globe facing similar and very different challenges, but knowing we're each here together with visions and goals for the beneficiaries of compassionate education. So thank you on behalf of all the team, Garev Milamahigut, as we say in Gaelic, and may the rose rise up to meet you, may the wind be at your back, may the sunshine warm upon your land and may the rain fall soft upon your face. Until we meet again, may Mother Earth hold you in the palm of her hand. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Shane, and thank you to your outstanding CIT group of facilitators. And again, you can see where the inspiration comes to help carry this forward. So thank you again, Shane, so much. And now let's hear from some of our new Institute fellows who just went through this training on how compassion impacted them. And first Institute fellow will be Jessica Belgot, an East Central ISD secondary teacher, special education department lead, and special education teacher in English. So welcome, Jessica. Hi, thank you, Jeff. I'm so grateful to be here and to have been a part of this Institute in this world, especially now there are circumstances often beyond our control. For me, compassion integrity training has been the key that's helped me to unlock inner peace and the midst of chaos, in order to take ownership of what I can change. Through CIT, I have been able to develop skills that foster a sense of equanimity from within so that I may in turn help and love others more wholeheartedly. As an educator, I realized that our young people are faced with so many pressing and uncertain issues on a day to day basis. Many have experienced various forms of trauma and are still learning to navigate their lives amidst a pandemic and racial injustice. Moreover, I want to teach my students the skills needed to develop resilience so that they are not defined by their past or present circumstances. I want my students to derive the strength from within. And I want them to know that we are all in this together as we work through our shared and individual struggles. I hope to use compassionate integrity training practices, both in the moment and as intentional lessons to help students develop a medicognitive awareness of their body's response to stress so that they can become more mindful of the values and resources that ground them in the present moment. I hope to share these skills with fellow educators as well so more students can benefit from these practices. Those in the helping professions like teachers often experience empathetic distress when we continually feel the suffering and pain of others, especially our students. Compassion and integrity training practices help to counteract depression and anxiety as we learn to calmly respond in the present moment to situations that promote healing and peace. Hopefully, we can also extend this grace and love through teaching our students and others these invaluable skills that will also enrich their lives. Personally, compassionate training has gently reminded me to take a step back and focus on what really matters. As a teacher, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend, I worry about the uncertainties that surround the coronavirus pandemic racial injustice and more in our country. Through CIT, I have learned to be more self-compassionate with my own anxieties and fears in order to find peace in the midst of the storm. It's also reiterated the idea that in order to improve society, we need each other. I need you and you need me. Our current world is in desperate need of compassion. We can all grow and learn in ways that nurture a sense of kindness for ourselves and others. Indeed, compassion is the antidote to suffering, whether whatever form that may take, whether it be from violence, loneliness, mental illness, compassion and love in our society will create a more caring and united community of people who can come together in spite of differences as we acknowledge our common humanity. When deep waters rise and circumstances seem beyond control, we need an anchor to steady us. Therefore, it is vital to practice these skills of self-compassion and patience with our own suffering so that we may in turn alleviate the suffering of others. We all need to be that lifeboat for each other. May we continually open ourselves to sailing through the unpredictable currents together, stronger and more united than before. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jessica. Your students are going to be such winners by having you present with them. So thank you very much. And now I'd like to introduce Dr. Jaime Gonzalez. He's a board-certified physical therapist and orthopedics and sports physical therapy teaching at the University of the Incarnate Word and also a retired disabled veteran. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Jaime. Thank you, sir. Good morning, everyone. You know, I'm so very privileged and humbled to be a part of this inaugural cohort of fellows in the first ever San Antonio Compassionate Institute. I genuinely have found this experience to be a transformative and uplifting experience and, you know, from my perspective, it just has provided a framework for, I think, what is or I hope, what is endemic to all of us, right? That internal need and desire to be kind and compassionate toward everyone and our hope that others are kind and compassionate toward us. And it's, again, it's provided a framework around what someone mentioned earlier, right? This idea of the golden rule. I strive every day and I fail every day to be a person for others. And this experience in the Institute, these last five weeks or so, has really sort of provided a boost to me. And I genuinely feel reinvigorated. You know, this crisis that we're all in with the pandemic and with racial injustice, example after example after example of racial injustice, staring us right in the face. You know, can make for a little bit of a hard and angular outlook on life. And I'm so very grateful that my experience in this program has also, if I can be frank, been a little bit therapeutic for me. And I'm very grateful for that. And so I'm so looking forward to what the next year has in store for us all as we continue with the events as part of the Institute. And in my own daily life and my own interactions with my family with my neighbors with my friends with strangers. And certainly in my practice of teaching with my students and in my interactions with my patients and clients and their caregivers in my clinical practice. I have already begun to take what I've learned in the Institute and and again sort of in a little bit more formal way apply it to to my my perpetual striving to be a man for others. So thank you very much. Thank you, honey. Very much. Next, it's my pleasure to introduce Amanda Tillman. She's an English for dual credit teacher at James Madison High School, and also in the agricultural stem program in connection with San Antonio College. So, Amanda, welcome. Also, thank you to the mayor for supporting this program and to Shane and all the facilitators who helped us with all of the new things we've gotten to learn compassion has always been important to me. If you ask my students after they graduate what they remembered most from my class, most would rattle off some great literature facts or jokes, but time and again, what my students remember most one asked is that I started every class with some version of Hello, my beautiful people and ended each class with some version of I love you have a have a wonderful rest of your day. What they remembered beyond any book or poem or play, or even their final grade was that I took the time to say I cared every day rain or shine without pause all year. Compassion and support that they were seen appreciated, able to be safely vulnerable while growing and learning has always been my most important goal as a teacher. When I first heard of the compassion integrity training. I knew that I wanted to be involved in this next big step for San Antonio itself and for education at large. What I couldn't have known at the time was how I opening the course would come to be for me personally. I have found myself thinking about my interactions with my students, coworkers, family, friends, and even people I have never met from all around the world, focusing on the share level of interconnectivity and interdependence. I and everyone have with hundreds to millions of people every day, no matter what we are doing using sharing buying reading. I've been very moved by the study of empathetic compassion for all common humanity, through the use of ethical mindfulness. The way that it reminds us that all people seek joy and that they wish to avoid pain that context should not be required for our compassion. It might feel easier to have compassion for those we know, and the circumstances we understand, but those whose context, we don't know still deserve that compassion just as much. My biggest hope from this training is that I will be able to take these skills I've learned and apply them through returning to school, and it's and my school surrounding community in August, that I will be able to use and help others use the benefits of impartiality and empathetic compassion, that instead of just simply being an example of compassion my for my students, I can give them the tools to build on their own. Take the last two months of learning and apply it to the future of those I teach literature to a quote by Neil Gaiman surface quickly for me, he said, fiction gives us empathy. It puts us inside the minds of other people gives us the gifts to see the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things over and over and over teaching literature has always been about the stories of those in our pieces. I've said stories of those who have written the pieces and the story of society at large around both of those. In the coming year, I plan to start applying a more liberal understanding and educational focus on common humanity for all those independent and interdependent parts to spend more time deconstructing the biases around those that they can that the students can access and parallel more easily to their own lives and people all around the world. I want to empower my students to unearth empathetic compassion from everything they read, every work and every real world example, those stories will bring to bear in the classroom to support them as they reach the connections and draw the conclusions that every character and story just like every person in life around us, no matter how distant or de separate is still tied together by common humanity by the search for joy, the avoidance of pain, the right to compassion, the interconnectivity of all lives everywhere. This is the hard work, but I believe we can put our hearts and minds to it and that it has the power to change the world. Thank you. Thank you Amanda and I think you're changing the world already for us. So, thank you very much. Our next fellow is Anthony Sanchez, and he's a East Central High School US history teacher and also founding member of the young ambitious activists. So, welcome Anthony. Thank you. Thank you Jeff. So the Compassion Institute has been a reinforcer and a boost of compassion for me. I truly believe that right now in history I'm a US history teacher so I look at things in perspective of history, we are at a crossroads between compassion and understanding and hate and bigotry. It makes this Compassion Institute programs like this extremely important because we see how a social political 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 as an educator. I believe it is very important to teach compassion for some reason somewhere along the line, students are not taught compassion as much as they used to somewhere along the line. For the assembly line takes over, and we see them as machines that lack emotions, but they are not machines they are human beings that also have the ability to be compassionate. But it's something that needs to be fostered and that's something that the Compassion Institute has given me the skills to help foster that compassion among my students. One thing 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. If you would be isolated in this hard life. If we have that compassion that understanding that share collectiveness as human beings, we can come together to form something beautiful to push us to greater heights. Now of course our country is built upon individualism through rugged individualism pick yourself up by the bootstraps to not talk about your emotions to not talk about your struggles and to do it silently and that's something we need to break and I think that's the Compassion Institute is helping us deconstruct in ourselves to be able to teach to others to grow and foster among others. And for me personally has been a reinforcer of compassion. I have moved through the stages of compassion to where me and others have formed the young ambitious activists and organization that before May 31, none of us knew each other. Every founding member was a stranger but we had a share level of compassion and understanding and a willingness to want to help others who are struggling as well to address the injustices to help push the city forward and to reach new heights together as a collective and to build a family. That's the thing about our organization and that's something I also preach in my classroom is that we're family. 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 lasts compassion. Yes, it will be hard but another thing I say is the mountain may be high, but the cause is righteous. The mountain may be high, but the cause is righteous, and I look forward to continue to push compassion I look forward to helping my students reach their own level of compassion towards themselves, and that in turn will go towards others. So thank you for the opportunity and I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Anthony, for those words and I'm ready to help climb that mountain with you so thank you for those words. Now, I'd like to bring on. This is a co founder and CEO of M schools, which is K through 12 schools for undocumented students and families. Welcome, BD. Thank you Jeff, and good morning, everyone I'm delighted to share my experience as a participant of the natural compassionate Institute in San Antonio. My name is Mika Rizales 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 through 12 educators to transform our schools, and to save welcoming inclusive places for undocumented students and families, working as an organization working at the intersection of immigration and education. I came to this country when I was 11 years old with my family and navigating K through 12 as an undocumented student. I experienced discrimination experience synophobia. I remember feeling other and unwelcome. And in those moments, the words from Maya Angelo 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 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. Thank you so much. Thank you, Biddy, and you're such an inspiration. Now we have Catherine Lehman Meyer. She is director of the Academic Media Center at St. Mary's University. Thank you for being with us, Catherine. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Probably about 25 years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Lenece Bias. She had come to San Antonio to speak to all the students at Linear High School about staying off drugs. And this woman is well known because her son, Len, was supposed to play basketball for the Bolton Celtics. He was very popular, well-known basketball player, but he died of a drug overdose. And then she lost another son due to a drive-by shooting in a mall parking lot. And so at the end of the interview, I said to her, you know, you must feel great if you just changed the life of, you know, one of these students in the room. She said to me, I should stop this interview now. I've never been more insulted in my life. We should just stop the camera. And I was really taken back. I've never had anybody talk to me like that. I'd done thousands of interviews. And she said to me, we have a responsibility to reach all but one. If we leave one behind, that's okay, but we have a responsibility to reach all but one. As an educator, that has become my personal mission and to have a life-changing impact on every one of my students that I come in contact with. And I know that this training is helping me become a better wife, a better mother, a better co-worker, a better boss and a better teacher. So imagine the impact that the compassion integrity training can have on our city. If everyone has the opportunity to attend and learn these practices as I have, we would reach all but one. Training to withhold judgment is really hard. And it starts first with ourselves. We get on this treadmill of trying to get through the day without any time to reflect on what we're doing and how we're treating people without the tools and the practices that can be tailored to the way that we're wired. So we have incentive to carve out time to refocus ourselves. And our community is craving for access to this kind of training. Every person that I have mentioned this to has asked how do they sign up for it? And when can I share what I've been learning? How am I going to bring that into the classroom? Our nation, our state and our city are facing unique challenges thanks to COVID-19 and the recent protests. It's imperative that our city, a city that has always been compassionate, healing and accepting, become even more compassionate to be able to tackle these issues head on. As you've heard, the compassion integrity training teaches a system with techniques and tools that foster productive dialogue. The more systems and citizens that can have access and exposure to this and the more we can integrate this into our systems, the greater the chance that we will find innovative solutions to solve problems first within ourselves, next within our families, and within our workplaces. And that in turn impacts our city, which is a critical support network for all the residents. We have a responsibility to bring this to the all but one. So I really thank you for this opportunity today. Thank you, Catherine. And I would like to thank all of these Institute fellows for their moving insightful and inspiring words today. These are just six beacons of hope spreading seeds of compassion. There are 150 more just like them ready to spread seeds throughout the educational system here in San Antonio and beyond. Congratulations and thank you to our inaugural class of Institute fellows. This concludes our presenters remarks. At this time, I would like to ask the media to go to the Q&A tab on their screen to ask questions of our presenters. Please identify yourself and note the question as who it is to be directed to you. So at this time, if you would go to the Q&A tab, we welcome any questions you may have. We now have a question from now cast of San Antonio, and this is directed to the mayor. Mayor, what would you hope people take away from today? Well, thank you and also thank you to all of the fellow Institute members. I think probably would want people to take away two things. One is that compassion is the underpinning of all of our interactions as a community from, you know, government to civic to business to community. Everything on a foundation of compassion. And that's something that San Antonio has dedicated itself to. The other thing is take a look at the Institute members. I mean, it is truly a cross section of our community, all walks of life, all ages, all races, all backgrounds and beliefs. And I think we are united by this idea that the golden rule is common in humanity and we are driven by instilling that in all of our pursuits in our different walks of life. Thank you mayor. Again, please open your Q&A tab and we'll be glad to entertain your question. Okay, not hearing no other or seeing no other questions at this point. What I'd like to do is open it up to those who have been participating today. If you have questions of one another, or, you know, based on experiences and what you've heard, did you want to hear some more from one of your fellow institute fellows? Maybe a couple of questions just coming here, Jeff, at the moment. Okay, from Lisa Sanchez, and this is for Catherine. How do you plan to move forward and incorporate all you have learned in your day to day life. Well, already I have been integrating some of the practices directly into my senior capstone class that I'll be teaching with the communication students this fall. I'm also integrating it into some of the materials that I've been working with the education design lab. I've also built an empathy badge that's actually open for pilots. So if anyone has students that would like to participate in either the time management or the personal and professional networking or the empathy badge, but a lot of the content is sort of been integrated into those concepts. There are a couple of the concrete ways that I plan on sharing it. And then with some of the St. Mary's alumni that have been reaching back out to me, looking for their next steps or, you know, working through this pandemic I've also been able to share some of the practices with them. So that that's been how I've been able to do that. But I'd like to pose a question to the mayor if I can. And that's how, how are we going to do more to implement this training so that we reach the all but one. That's a great question. Reverend Helmke and I were already texting each other about where we need to go next with regard to compassion training but I think, you know, similar to when we do community wide planning activities. I can have things like SA 2020 and SA Tomorrow and all these other extraordinary community visioning processes. The compassionate charter and the compassionate Institute movement needs to be taken the same way, which is that it is a mission upon every organization that we take this training and philosophy into our organizations. And so, you know, for the city of San Antonio this is going to be a department by department training exercise. And, you know, try to lead by example again I did this with my staff I think about a year and a half or so ago. But I think we have to not stop until we. Stop, you know, because to your point, you know, reach all but one. It means that, you know, for every person that comes in to our organization have to be part of the culture. And, you know, 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 to our communities and and as leaders as members of the, the Institute we're now ambassadors for that movement and and have the responsibility to take that training. To our communities. Okay. Mayor it looks like since you're in the captive audience we have another question for you. Mayor how has San Antonio been a compassionate city during COVID-19. Well, I think that there's a lot of examples and there's, I mean, you just look around and you whenever there's a crisis you can see the best of humanity you can always often see the the opposite of that as well but San Antonio we have been fortunate to be in a city where people rise up in times of challenge. The most clear example that to me was the first experiences with the double food bank food lines, which happened literally overnight when the, the, 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 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 it's protecting the other person not necessarily yourself. I always point out a 10 year old girl who's a friend of my son that grew up together. Her name is Alejandra, and she's been taking all of her self imposed break to make face masks, and she's selling them for donations, which she contributes to her school district SAISD to ensure that some of her classmates can get connected to the internet. So it's little things like that you see all the time in San Antonio and this is a 10 year old girl she didn't. She didn't take a compassion training this is something that's instituted from her because her parents practice that kind of ethic. This is from an anonymous attendee and actually, I think, Sister Martha and Kirk from UIW would like to answer this question. What are some ways that the San Antonio compassion fellows can connect with the international groups who are also taking CIT? Sister Martha Ann, would you like to? It's been wonderful for me the last two years to monthly be in alumni calls connecting with educators in other parts of the world and Shane O'Connor who is with us right now is really making wonderful efforts for educators in different countries to have opportunities to hear from each other and Shane, I don't like to add a little more to this. Thank you, Sister Martha Ann and I would love to if that's okay and I can try and answer Karen's question in the process here as well. So similar to the Compassion Institute Life University and the Center for Compassion Integrity and Secular Ethics. We're small right now but hugely ambitious and I think we'd be very naive to think that we can do all this on our own, and we need partnerships for sure. And it's only through partnerships and fostering and really building and learning from each other that we can really reach the ambitions that we hope to reach and climb those mountains that we've heard mentioned before today. So the question around the kindness ambassadors or the young kindness ambassadors. This comes out through through one of our partnerships and it's a very strong partnership right now and we're very fortunate to have strong links with UNESCO and MGIP. So UNESCO people know about but the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Peace and Sustainable Development are some of our partners right now, as well as the Charter for Compassion and Marlin and our incredible team who just keep going tirelessly for this vision of compassion throughout the world. And so with MGIP and UNESCO they have a youth, one of their branches is working on kindness ambassadors so they propose and connect with young leaders throughout the world and provide training for them. And then last year myself and Marlin and another member of our team, Tom Flores, we were lucky to go in person because I know a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to meet in person over the last number of months. But we met in person and we met some of these young inspiring ambassadors for kindness and compassion and they made a declaration to the United Nations in December 2019. And there was a number of categories that they want the leaders of this world to to uphold in relation to compassion in relation to kindness and and integrity as well. So it's we're taking the lead not only from our partner organizations but from young people who have a very strong voice within those institutions and organizations. And just to say that in terms of opportunities that are coming out where our hope is that we go back to working in person with with people face to face and be able to offer training and learn from people with feedback like we're getting today. But we also want to reach out to as many people with our self directed learning which is hopefully going to just just around the corner we should be launching our self directed learning platform with the help of UNESCO the Charter for Compassion MGIP. So yeah, we're not naive enough to think we can do it alone but certainly ambitious enough to think collectively and collaboratively. We have a chance of realizing some of these ambitions. Thank you Shane. I'd like to go ahead and take one more question and I think again I'm going to direct this to the mayor because I think it goes to what we're going to be looking at as we expand this Institute through the different systems and that is Will the city be setting aside funding to bring this curriculum to nonprofits and other city programs. And maybe and help keep and help answer that too. I just wanted him to know that I didn't write that question. So I also can't answer it. Yeah, the obviously commitments on financial resources have grown quite cloudy as we've gotten into the budget year and into the pandemic so I can't answer that it concretely I will say though that it has been the mission and the intent of the faith based Institute at the city of San Antonio to do exactly what you're saying in partnership with nonprofits and other community organizations to basically provide this particular training to as much of the community as we possibly can and certainly focus in part on our own city departments and representatives so I don't know the answer to the question concretely, but I will say that the goal is shared by my office and by the city to take this training outward. Very good. Well, thank you very much. And I want to thank all for attending today, San Antonio Compassionate Institute 2020 for educators. And so this concludes our press conference for today. Thank you very much.