Compassionate Atlanta: A Love Letter to Atlanta

Dear Atlanta,

There's a story unfolding in your streets that you need to hear about. It's a story about what happens when a city decides to become truly compassionate.

It's about compassion. Not the fleeting kind that shows up in moments of crisis and fades when things calm down. But steady, intentional, transformative compassion. The kind that changes how a city functions: where people show up for each other, where systems support human flourishing, where everyone belongs.

Not in spite of your complexity, but because of it. Not ignoring your challenges, but recognizing your extraordinary capacity to transform them through collective care.

Ten years ago, over 300 people gathered at the Carter Center with a bold vision: to make Atlanta a compassionate city. They came from your sprawling neighborhoods and small-town pockets, from your interfaith communities and your nonprofit organizations, carrying your civil rights legacy forward into unfinished work toward justice. They asked: What if we built a compassionate city where compassion became not just a value we claim, but a practice we live?

The moment arrived. What had been conversation became commitment. What had been a possibility became action. From that launch event, Compassionate Atlanta was born as a grassroots organization with a clear mission: to raise awareness about the benefits of compassionate action throughout Greater Atlanta by teaching and encouraging people of every persuasion and walk of life to channel their concern for each other's well-being into tangible action. To build a compassionate city.

Leanne Rubenstein came on as director, and she and Iyabo Onipede now serve as co-directors, modeling shared leadership because in a compassionate city, power is distributed, not hoarded. Space is made for multiple voices, multiple truths, multiple ways of leading.

They understood something fundamental: a compassionate city isn't built overnight. Compassion is a practice that radiates outward in expanding circles. Like ripples from a stone dropped in water, compassionate action starts with the individual and spreads to relationships, to physical spaces, to regions beyond your borders, and ultimately to the systems that shape all our lives. Each ripple strengthens what a compassionate city can become.

For a decade now, they've been demonstrating what happens when people say yes to building a compassionate city: where people care for themselves so they can care for others, where neighbors truly know and support each other, where spaces welcome everyone, where connections extend beyond borders, and where systems are redesigned to prioritize human dignity.

This is their story. This is your story. This is what happens when a city commits to compassionate action.

Compassionate Atlanta organizes their work around five expanding ripples, each one strengthening the foundation for a compassionate city.

The first ripple turns inward.Before your people can show up compassionately for others, they need to learn self-compassion: treating yourself with the same kindness you'd offer a good friend. Through learning programs and practices, participants discover that self-compassion isn't selfish or indulgent. It's the foundation for sustainable compassionate action.

The second ripple spreads to relationships.Compassion for and with others means both understanding and action, listening deeply and showing up tangibly. Compassionate Atlanta facilitates community conversations where people practice the art of truly hearing each other, sitting with stories without rushing to solutions.

But listening is only the beginning. Compassionate action means showing up for each other in concrete ways, checking on neighbors, offering help without being asked, creating space for those who feel unseen.

Over the years, Compassionate Atlanta has distributed 25,000 Love Notes throughout the community. 25,000 printed messages of encouragement, kindness, and gratitude that turn strangers into friends and remind people they matter.

The third ripple becomes visible in physical spaces.Waller's Coffee in Decatur exemplifies this work. In partnership with Compassionate Atlanta, Decatur Makers, and an Eagle Scout, they transformed their outdoor space: redesigning the children's area, creating signs celebrating inclusion, and building an accessible entrance. What emerged wasn't only a more accessible coffee shop but a space declaring through every design choice: everyone belongs here.

At CompassionCon each October, Legacy Park itself becomes a demonstration of compassionate place-making, where accessibility and welcome are built in from the start.

The fourth ripple extends beyond the borders.Compassionate Atlanta reaches into rural Georgia communities, bringing programs and conversations to small towns across the state. Co-Director Iyabo Onipede emphasizes the importance of bringing rural and urban partners into conversation, valuing rural communities as community, leaving no one behind.

Through connection to the International Charter for Compassion, they've brought together the Greater Atlanta Area and rural Georgia with a global network of 2,600+ partners and 400+ Compassionate City initiatives worldwide. Local actions connect to global impact.

The fifth ripple touches systems.This is perhaps the hardest and most important work. Compassionate Atlanta focuses on the Social Determinants of Health, those conditions in environments where people are born, live, learn, work, and age. Research from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that clinical care impacts only 20 percent of county-level variation in health outcomes, while social determinants affect as much as 50 percent.[1] The organization works to help Atlanta, Clarkston, Decatur, and Berkeley Lake (Cities who have signed to Charter of Compassion) to develop compassion action plans. These plans are designed to address each city's most pressing challenges while reflecting both civic leadership vision and community aspirations. By bringing together community members and city officials in this structured planning process, Compassionate Atlanta helps create sustainable change at the systems level where policies, resources, and institutional practices can reach entire communities rather than just individuals.

Compassionate Atlanta builds a network of Charter Partners and offers the Welcoming, Belonging, & Compassion Assessment to help organizations evaluate inclusivity and embed compassion into their operations. They teach people to take these practices into workplaces, schools, and communities, multiplying impact exponentially.

Five ripples, each building on the last, each essential to creating a compassionate city.

Each October, something remarkable happens in Legacy Park, Decatur. The five ripples that spread throughout the year converge in one place, at one time. CompassionCon becomes the living embodiment of what a compassionate city looks like.

This isn't only a festival. It's where you can experience compassionate action rather than just learn about it. Self-compassion practices. Deep listening across difference. Radically welcoming space. Rural and urban partners connecting. Charter Partners sharing how they're embedding compassion into their work. All five ripples, visible and tangible in a single day.

CompassionCon is where theory becomes practice, where aspiration becomes experience, where the individual ripples reveal themselves as one interconnected movement. It's where people don't just hear about building a compassionate city, they feel what it's like to be in one.

And that experience changes what people believe is possible.

A decade is long enough to see real change take root. Long enough to see something profound emerge.

By 2025, Compassionate Atlanta has connected with 12,000+ of your residents through newsletters and social media. They've provided learning opportunities and resources to hundreds of people throughout Georgia. They've facilitated countless community conversations across your urban and rural reaches. They've built a network of Charter Partners committed to compassionate action. They've influenced your city policies and practices.

But the numbers that matter most are harder to count. They're visible in the fabric of everyday life, in the ways your people care for each other:

-The person who learned self-compassion and stopped burning out in service to others.

-The child who discovered that empathy is a skill you can practice, not just a feeling you hope to have.

-The wheelchair user who can now access community spaces because someone designed with inclusion from the start.

-The business where compassion became embedded in the culture, not just a poster on the wall.

-The policies written with your most vulnerable residents in mind.

-The rural community that no longer feels forgotten.

-The global network where your innovations inspire change thousands of miles away.

-The systems that slowly, steadily begin to prioritize human dignity and belonging.

Five ripples, spreading wider and wider, touching more and more lives. Building a compassionate city.

And here's what ten years have taught us: when you build a compassionate city through intentional practice across all five ripples, you create something even more powerful: a caring community.A compassionate city is the framework, the commitment, the practice. A caring community is what emerges when that practice takes root and spreads, when compassionate action becomes the way people live together, when the five ripples strengthen and sustain each other until caring for one another becomes the culture itself.

This is what it looks like when an organization centers compassion with intention for ten years. This is what it looks like when people commit to caring for themselves, for each other, for their spaces, for their wider networks, and for their systems. This is how a compassionate city becomes a caring community.

The work of building a compassionate city continues, and it needs people willing to make ripples of their own.

Compassionate Atlanta offers pathways to join this work. Learn about upcoming events like CompassionCon, where all five ripples converge and you can experience what a compassionate city feels like. If your organization wants to embed compassion into its culture, explore theWelcoming, Belonging, & Compassion Assessmentto evaluate inclusivity and set meaningful goals. Connect with the Charter Partners network to learn from others building compassionate practices into their work.

But perhaps the most important invitation is simpler: practice compassion in your own life. Turn it inward first, treat yourself with the kindness you'd offer a friend. Extend it to those around you, listen deeply, ask questions, sit with answers. Notice the spaces you inhabit and who might feel excluded. Connect beyond your immediate circle. Consider how your choices, your voice, your actions might shift the systems you're part of.

Because ten years have shown us this: a compassionate city is built one choice at a time. It begins when people show up. When they turn compassion inward. When they practice it with others. When they create welcoming spaces. When they connect beyond their immediate community. When they work to change the systems that shape our lives.

One ripple leads to another. And another. And another. Until an entire city becomes compassionate, and a caring community emerges.

The ripple that started with 300 people at The Carter Center has touched thousands of lives across all five ripples of compassion. It continues to build a compassionate city and create a caring community that honors every person.

Will you step into the water?

[1] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. "Addressing Social Determinants of Health." April 2022.https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/e2b650cd64cf84aae8ff0fae7474af82/SDOH-Evidence-Review.pdf

Learn more about Compassionate Atlanta's work atcompassionateatl.org. Discover upcoming events, explore theWelcoming, Belonging, & Compassion Assessment,and find pathways to bring compassionate action into your own life and community.