Positive vibes still linger in the community after the success of last year’s Compassion Project and the many honourable deeds and good intentions it encouraged. All of that kindness seems to have caught on and now several community organizations are joining forces to form the Powell River Compassionate Action Network [PRCAN].
PRCAN will serve as a community-wide expansion of the Compassion Project, an initiative pioneered in April 2011 by a group of Brooks Secondary School students along with teachers Chris Bratseth and Darren Bennett. With a mandate to reduce bullying and make kindness the new definition of cool, the group challenged the community to commit 10,000 acts of compassion on May 26 of that same year. Those acts included everything from picking up trash, donating to charity, writing someone a nice note, or simply offering a smile or a high-five. Many were documented on an online blog.
School District 47 board chair Jeanette Scott has spearheaded this latest spinoff of the initiative after seeing its school-based incarnation fade more and more into silence over the past year amid ongoing job action among educators. “The Max [Cameron Theatre] was filled for the event that they held last year and the students were really keen. I thought, this is not good that this event is not continuing,” she said.
Scott said she found further inspiration after an appearance by British author Karen Armstrong in Vancouver last March and also from a local discussion between community members at the Interfaith Fair held at Dwight Hall in April. Armstrong is the architect behind the International Charter for Compassion, which will be affirmed by the City of Powell River at a public ceremony on Saturday, June 23.
Powell River will be the newest of only a few cities in Canada that have adopted the charter, which has been translated into 30 languages and signed by 87,782 people worldwide.
As a non-profit community collective, PRCAN will have a similar mandate to the Compassion Project and will work to promote an ethic of caring. “Its purpose is to build compassionate community through education, engagement, commitment and collaboration,” said Scott in a written statement.
Founding members will include the city, First Credit Union, Vancouver Island University, the school district, Powell River Child, Youth and Family Services Society, and Powell River Diversity Initiative.
Grade 12 student Chloe Langmaid, a member of the Compassion Project’s founding group, expressed her excitement in seeing the initiative expand further into the community. “It’s great that this is becoming a community thing and not just within the school anymore,” she said, adding that with teachers’ job action this year, getting the group together has been a challenge. Having the community become more involved will ensure the initiative can expand and grow even without teacher assistance and from core members who have recently graduated.
Langmaid and fellow student Rhiannon Tully-Barr will be involved in Saturday’s ceremony and charter affirmation, reading verses from the Charter for Compassion and speaking about how their involvement in the Compassion Project began and evolved. A student-made documentary will be screened as well, featuring interviews with various community members about what compassion means to them, alongside footage from last year’s compassion challenge. Members of the Greater Vancouver Compassion Network will also be in attendance.
Admission is free and ceremonies will begin at 1 pm at Max Cameron Theatre. For more information, interested readers may contact Scott at 604.487.0750 or [email protected].
