Compassionate Atlanta
Who We Are: Compassionate Atlanta is a grassroots community-building nonprofit which seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of compassionate action throughout the Greater Atlanta area. Since 2015, Compassionate Atlanta (CA) has been building a movement around the idea of compassionate action. CA’s work is done out in the community. We are founded on the International Charter for Compassion, with the call to action to honor our common humanity. CA is a grassroots movement that engages local individuals, schools, businesses, organizations, congregations, and cities around the idea of compassionate action.
What We Do: As part of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities' Welcoming Community Movement, we are raising awareness about compassionate action by teaching and encouraging people of every persuasion and walk of life to channel their concern for the wellbeing of others into tangible action. The goal is to build healthier, more connected, abundant and thriving communities.
We advance and shift the local and global culture by centering compassion with everyone we connect with and everything that we do. We practice and model mindful interactions through training with models such as Compassionate Integrity Training. We sponsor and engage in community conversations to awaken the compassionate experience through facilitation in our meetups. In addition, we promote living compassionately in a diverse world through our advocacy and civic engagement efforts as we address racial and economic justice issues locally.
Our work focuses on providing training, facilitating conversations, providing resources and bringing greater compassion and kindness into our world, in turn creating healthier, safer and more vibrant communities.
Specifically, CA has been working around the digital divide by hosting weekly calls with teachers, school staff, parents and nonprofits to understand the gaps with remote learning in Dekalb county. CA hosted several pop-ups before the start of school and assisted over 200 students in getting in line for remote classes. Since then CA has continued pop-ups in the community to give out PPE (including over 1000 kid and adult masks and hand sanitizer), school supplies, self-directed learning materials for new learners, and more than 1500 books with our partners Refugee Village, Catholic Charities and the City of Clarkston.
In addition, CA offered a teen leadership and advocacy zoom series for those interested in uplifting voices and empowering themselves and other to self-advocate and show up for others in community. We offered a series of community conversations on the intersection of Gender, Sexuality and Disability and had a graphic artist create three beautiful pieces to express the participants dreams and hopes for the wider community. Atlanta Pride provided additional funding for this project.
CA’s work centers around welcoming and belonging and we have been working with a team of professionals, as well as a group of MSW students to identify the ways people feel seen, heard, and included in businesses and community spaces.
In that same vein, CA is working on dismantling structures of racial injustice by offering training, community conversations and modeling ways to share power and empower those around us who provide mutual aid in our communities each day.
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