Compassionate SWFL celebrates one year of working toward a more compassionate community

This is Gulf Coast Life. I’m Mike Kiniri thinks for joining us. Almost two decades ago, a British woman named Karen Armstrong won a Ted prize. It's like the MacArthur genius grant that helps people realize their dreams. And she used it to start the charter for compassion. It's a global movement that seeks to promote the principle of compassion as a central ethical value in society. Since then, more than 100 cities in the US have officially declared, through something like a City Council resolution, that they are compassionate communities which affirm the charter. Here in Florida. Saint Augustine signed on in 2013 and Saint Pete did in 2018. One year ago, a group of Southwest Floridians held their first Shaping a compassionate Fort Myers event to start building momentum toward embedding compassion into our local community. We spoke with them when the effort first launched and then as it progressed. And today we check back in as they celebrate their one year anniversary this weekend. Julian Ramirez is a member of the Shaping a Compassionate Fort Myers movement. He's part of the leadership team, and he is vice president of the Interfaith Action Group. Welcome back to the show, Julian. Thank you for having me, Mike. Bill Metz is also a member of the movement and part of the leadership team. Great to see you, Bill. And great to see you too. Mike and Doctor Maria Roca is director of Florida Gulf Coast University's Roots of Compassion and Kindness, or ROCK Center. She's also an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies and a founding FGCU faculty member. Always a pleasure, Maria. Thank you for having me back. So, Bill, I'm going to start with you. They've been on the show before. I don't think you've ever been on Gulf Coast Life not to talk about compassion anyway. So tell the listeners about yourself. Oh my gosh. Well, I will tell about myself in relationship to these folks. I am honored and pleased to be involved with these people who have the hearts to jump into. Exploring the idea of making where we live a compassionate place. It's part of who I am serving humanity. My faith is by the. One of the founding principles is is to be involved in service to humanity as much as possible. These folks help me do it. And all the other folks involved there. They're coming up on their 12th events. One year anniversary. How long have you been in the mix? I think I made it. I started it with the second one. I think I missed the first one and I've been at basically to everyone except one right through. And that was because I went to the Brave Angels group. That's right. And listeners may know you as a musician in Southwest Florida as your guitar and singing part of your involvement of this? Of course. Yes. You know, it's it's what I do. So you guys have been on the show twice now to talk about this. When I had you on after you'd had three of them, I said so. Was there much difference between the third one and the first one? Now I want to know, has there been much of evolution between the third one and the 11th or now coming up on 12th, one, you know, is this thing starting to take shape and kind of find a momentum that emerged? Maria. Yes, yes, yes. We have action groups in a variety of different areas that are working independently and then come together in these meetings to bring us up to date on what that's been going on in the action groups. We have a website which is a big movement forward for us and official name. You can find it at it's now cswfl.org which is Compassion Southwest Florida. So we have a website so you can see what the action groups are doing. So yes, and there are people like the three of us who've been at almost every single meeting. So there is a really devoted core of people involved. What what would you say to that question, Julian? So I'll answer a little bit different. I'm thinking of a baby. It's like a baby now. It's one years old. We have we're barely. Setting up on. Its own yet. No, no, we're trying to set up and we're we have we have a high ambition of making Southwest Florida compassionate. So we're barely lifting our head. But I think it's like a living organism and it's taking form. People feel invested in it. We have a great support and it's growing. Bill mentioned earlier Braver Angels. We've been beginning to associate ourselves with Brave Angels, and they bring a great addition to this movement, you know, to this initiative. So it's a it's a baby. It's a baby bill. You know, describe one of these convening. Do you call them convening conversations? I think I thought I read convening somewhere and I thought, that's a interesting conversations. Bill, describe what these conversations are like for somebody who's never been to one. Just you know, what if somebody asked you what happens at these things. When you walk in the door, you'll see tables, and there will be a kind of like a welcoming table who will let you know what's going on at the other tables. And, you know, one table will be with for people who are very concerned with housing, you know, housing for people who don't. Affordable housing, mental health. Another one will be mental health for youth. You know how you know, how do people get mental health support for for their young ones? What's available out there, how to get it. And the and another one will be for veterans issues and so on. I'm for virtues. It's a whole different thing. But then you have a choice. You can go to different tables and see what's going on. You can go to the One Race Coalition and sit down at that table, and you can see what's going on, and eventually you make a choice and you say, this is the issue that I feel solid the is concerned about, and I will hang here. You put your and then you just have conversations about how can we improve the community's compassion and understanding of this issue, what can we do to help improve? It's so it is conversations of of real consequence, of true consequences. Are they frank conversations? Maria. Very yes. In fact, there's been some disagreement at some of the tables. But one of the things we really work on is compassionate conversation and allowing everyone's voice to be heard. I want to add a little bit to what Bill is saying, that when a new person comes in, a member of our group, Cynthia Rocha, who used to work at FGCU, who is founding faculty and is now a very involved member of our core committee, welcomes people at the door and she will sit with them. And if you have a new idea, you can create a new table. And actually, at one of our last meetings, there were several people interested in compassionate entrepreneurship. And so they have now created a new group about compassionate entrepreneurship. And so it really it's not you don't have to come in and go right to one of the tables that's already established. If you've got a new idea, there's room for you. Are these ideas being somehow aggregated into a next step thing? Julian. Yes. So each table is being run through a process. And that's that's kind of what happened with the conversations. They're evolving through time. In the beginning, we were having conversations to see where compassion is missing and how we can organize ourselves to begin to address it. But as time has progressed, now the groups are having action items or organizing themselves to do projects, and they're at different stages of the evolution. And all this information will be on the website or is already on the website, so it'll be available for people to see it. We have two websites as CSI Floors and Compassionate Southwest Florida, and there will be examples of the action tables in the progress that they've made on those on those pages. Is there like a core group that continues to come back, or do you get new faces every time? Both. Yeah, both. There's a very devoted core group that comes probably 30 to 40 people that have been at almost every single meeting. But then there's new people that come and a lot of them then have stayed and keep coming back. They really appreciate a space to talk about making our community a more compassionate, loving community. Are you preaching to the choir? Do you know what I mean? Like are there? Do you have edge cases come in people who who are skeptical but maybe walk away less skeptical. So I don't think we don't really preach. So what we're. Doing the metaphor, not the act. Yes, I hear exactly where you going, but it's almost like we're facilitating. So we're facilitating a process where people are meeting at tables and having discussions about how to solve a problem. And what's happening is you have representatives from different organizations that are showing up, like, for instance, a midwest food bank. They send representative and they have they have representative at the Food Access Table Center or Crisis Prevention for empowerment. That's at the mental health table. As you see, you has a representative at the mental health table. So we have like leaders of organizations and community leaders kind of working with a collaborative spirit to address the concept. Now, there has been in the beginning there was some maybe tension or, or or, you know, disagreements. But, you know, that's not what we're looking for either. We're looking for for action. We're looking to address the problem and solve it, understanding that we're not going to all agree or believe the same things. And I think that's part of the magic. And there's a very good, diverse and representative group that has been meeting. I would add to that, I would say it's a yes and answer that yes. Are we preaching to the choir? To a certain extent, yeah. These are people that understand that having a compassionate communities are really good thing, and those people are going out to their communities and carrying this forward to people who might not be the ones that would come naturally. So they brought some people in who haven't fully been on board and are moving, hopefully a little bit more in the direction of understanding the power of community. So yes, to a certain extent we're preaching to the choir, but I think the and part is maybe the more important part that then we're carrying it out. I know before we started, Bill and I were having a conversation about the virtues which he's going to talk more about, but the idea that our hope is that people will take a moment and reflect about who do you want to be in your community? Do you want to be a purveyor of kindness and compassion, and do you want to be somebody who's promoting anger and division? I think most people want to be part of a positive community, and really do believe in making this a more compassionate community. As I was putting the script together, I was thinking kind of like what you were just saying. It's like almost giving it a name. You're just having the thought that we should be more compassionate and that I and I mean, it will probably change how you live your life just just acknowledging that it's something worth pursuing. Yes. And one of the things we've seen, I don't know if I've talked about this in the past, but, you know, when we've done activities where we've given people an assignment to, here's $10, go out and do something kind. And when students come back and talk about this, they say for the first time in a long time, they got out of their own head and got into the community and started looking around and started saying they reported they felt less anxiety, they have felt less stress. So just changing the way you're walking in the world that you're walking in the world looking for people to help, actually helps your mental health. So Bill Maria mentioned the virtues thing. So first before you talk about that, they've both been challenged multiple times on this show to define compassion in their own life and in our culture. It's your turn. Bill Metts. Compassion. Compassion is, I think of it as what it is, the spark that creates action. If you, quote unquote, feel compassion about something and you don't move. What's the point? Compassion spurs us on into action to show acts of kindness, to show acts of love. And the good thing. The thing about it is that we all, on some level, every one of us has that within us. The practice of it getting up, doing something kind is what helps it become stronger. That's the virtue in us. The compassion is the virtue. So in us it comes stronger, becomes stronger as we as we practice it. That's what that happens in the group is people are practicing and they're getting better just by doing it. Practicing compassion. I knew Bill would have a good answer. Now tell us about the virtues thing. Well, the virtues I am in, as Jules is, as well as I am a Virtues Project International Facilitator certified. And what we do is we it started in try to do this quickly. It started as a as a result of some research dealing with an epidemic of violence and suicide among young people in Canada. The folks who decided to do some research, they found they believed that the reason that they found was that life had no meaning at that time. For those for the for those youth and anything goes. Life had no meaning. They decided that the one thing that they could come up with was faiths. And they looked at all of the major faiths, came up with the thing that tied them all together, and that was virtue, kindness, understanding, love, compassion and integrity, so on and so forth. Thinking up with a long list of them, they decided that it was, let's talk about these. Let's it's not at all associated with a faith or a religion. Let's talk about the actual virtues that they call us to. And in doing so, it became a program that was actually recognized by the UN as a something for businesses, a program for businesses, schools, families, all kinds of communities to use to make their organizations make the world a better place. So is there a virtues element now in these community conversations? Absolutely. I one of the things that I have done, I've made myself, I assigned myself to a table at the beginning, then decided the the answer in all of them that there's something that is in every single table is a virtue. So I've popped around from table to table, gotten into the conversation, and I have. It's like I have no choice in my own heart. Always it comes down to virtue. I lay virtue on the table based on what the conversations are, and ask them to think in these terms as well. It's not always compassion. Sometimes it's understanding. Understanding who you're talking with. Rather than saying, I need to, I need to convince you, you know, so it all of the virtues become involved in the conversations. My goal is my medical right now is not only to work within that, but I want to get it into public schools. You know, we call it character education. We talk about values. I call it virtue. And that's that's what my goal is. And we're trying to work it into the fabric of this. I talked to folks from the Uncommon Friends Foundation last week, and that's part of what they do. And they also have tried to and struggled with getting it formally into education. But you might want to look up what they're doing because it seems like there's at least some overlap. I saw that this morning. Believe it or not. Oh, oh. It's actually sitting on my computer waiting for me to watch it. Wow, wow, look at that. Do you think, Maria, that that there is a thirst for empathy and compassion that's emerging? You know, every year that goes by and the world gets crazier? I bring that up because I talked to a filmmaker for three song stories, and she read a kid's book where the main character was all about compassion and empathy, and she was so moved, she read it to her kid. She found the author, got the rights, started trying to get it made, and it just screened at Tribeca, starring Paul Rudd. And it came out of just her reading a book and thinking, the world needs this. And she said that the further she got the screenplay she wrote up into the world, people were just like, we need this. Is that evidence? Is that happening? Is that my imagination? No, it's not your imagination. We're absolutely seeing it. And I'm going to mention that we just hosted the K20 summit here at Florida Gulf Coast University. We had over 300 people in attendance from all over the world. They came from India, they came from South America, they came from England. And in all of these corners, there are kindness movements happening. It's absolutely incredible and exciting. The problem is that doesn't make the headlines on the news. But for every crazy headline, there are 10,000 acts of kindness and we forget that. But I think this is part of what this whole movement is about, is reminding people that there's much more compassion and kindness in this world than there is anger and hatred. We just need to be focusing on that more in our media, and we appreciate that you've allowed us to come on here to talk about this. Do you have any thoughts on that that that thirst? I let me share it from this perspective. One thing that I've learned in this past year is that people are motivated or lit up by different virtues. So compassion, some people, when you give them or acknowledge their compassion, their eyes will light up for another person. It might be the word kindness or another person, it might be the word service, or another person might be the word or so there's all these virtues that light up people. So what I'm seeing is an opportunity to engage people in a setting where we can identify the virtue that lights them up and let that be the source, or the fuel or the lens by which they approach a collaborative solution. And I think that's what is kind of being evident. I think I asked you guys last, this last time you were on the show, but, you know, is there a way for this to make it out and somehow become viral? Like, you know, I don't know if everything that virality touches is spoiled or whatever, but, you know, there's a lot of people who, you know, maybe it is. Maybe that's part of the emergence that I'm talking about. I'm not on TikTok. I don't know. I hope it doesn't take a major crisis to, to to cause it. We're doing all we can to be proactive about planting seeds of kindness and compassion in the community. But unfortunately, sometimes it takes a crisis for people to be able to wake up and see how they could serve. And it happens with natural disasters. Here in Florida, we see evidence of that. People from all walks of life coming together to help and to care for their neighbor. But hopefully we can do it without having to wait for a crisis. An acute crisis, right? Because I think we've got a couple of crises, a long, long arc crises. Real quick, go back to the K20 summit. I don't think I've talked to you since it happened. We talked to you in advance of it. Did it turn out well? We sold out. Yeah, we sold out. It was amazing. Both of these make beautiful friends here to either side. I think when I talked to you, you were not sold out. We were scared. But then all these people kept showing up and showing up. And one of the most exciting things for me was how many people came from different parts of Florida, so that we now have a network that we're building with people in the Miami area, up in the Saint Petersburg area, up in the Orlando area. And I think that what we might be working on for next year is sort of mini K20 that's completely Florida focused, and bringing all of these people from around the state together to to show. I mean, you talk about it becoming viral, like what I'm seeing these people doing in all these other communities is really exciting. And I just want to put a plug in for one thing that's happening right here in Fort Myers. Kelly Faia, who is an attorney here, has a foundation called kindly, and she is now on her website. You'll see she has a 10,000 Acts of kindness movement here in the Fort Myers area. And so she's hoping that people will go out and do things and then post them on social media. And then we have a big announcement that will be coming up in the next couple of months from the ROCK Center. I don't want to say what it is yet, but it's an elevation of that to even higher level. So, you know, there's lots of activity going on. And I do think there is some viral opportunities here. Real quick. How long is the ROCK Center been around. Now 2019. 2019. And you got to be quick on this one. I know that we've talked before, like Saint Augustine and Saint Pete have officially signed on, and there has been at least efforts to get Fort Myers to do something similar. Is there anything on that front? Well, we've had the mayor attend a session. We need to follow up. But we do have a new relationship with the mayor from Manitou Springs, Colorado, who managed to convert that community. And he's willing to work with us and actually talk directly to our mayor to help him understand just how powerful this can be and what good it does for a community. We're basically out of time. You haven't talked for a while, Bill, so I'm going to give you the final thoughts. Final thoughts that the the world is ready for this. Everywhere, everywhere you go, you start talking to people no matter what spectrum they are on. And you start talking about kindness and understanding their nodding their heads. You talk about compassion, they're nodding their heads. There may be a different way that they think of how we are going to get there. That's why we want to come together at these tables and say, let's work together, because we really, truly are all working for the same thing. We all want peace. We all want compassion and understanding. Let's work together. Bill Metz is part of the shaping a compassionate Fort Myers leadership team. He often provides the songs I understand. So good to see you, Bill. You too. Thanks. This is wonderful. Doctor Maria Roca is an associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies at FGC. You? And she's a founding director of Roots of Compassion and Kindness Center. Thank you. Maria. Thank you for having. Me back. And Julian Ramirez is a member of the shaping a compassionate Fort Myers movement and part of the leadership team. And he is vice president of the Interfaith Action Group. Thank you for being here, Julian. Thank you. Mike. You can find details about their event this Saturday. It runs from ten, ten to. Two, ten. To one, 10 to 1. It's just find on our website or the websites they mentioned. Our website is wgcu.org/gcl Well, our show today was produced by yours truly, with audio production from Matt Krause and video production from David Oquendo for now. Thanks for listening. I'm Mike Kiniry. This is WGCU-FM Fort Myers 90.1 WMKO Marco Island 91.7 FM. We are NPR for Southwest Florida.