Hugh Mackay in Conversation

Each year the Australian Compassion Council holds a National Day of Compassion, to provide a meaningful opportunity for all Australians to participate in learning about and in practicing compassion. This is the fourth year this National Day has been convened and each National Day has a theme and in 2024 our Theme is Compassion and Deep Connection which featured six facets of deep connection including: Contested spaces - Indigenous Justice - Peace Culture - Repairing Relationships - Innate Connection with our Environment - Dealing with our Distracted World. The National Day started with a launch that included presentations from the CEO of the global Charter for Compassion, Marilyn Turkovich on the Charter’s involvement in the 19th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates – with the Australian Charter Ambassador, Hugh Mackay, AO on Deep Connection in Community - and with the National Lead of the Australian Compassion Council, Dr Lynne Reeder on a Compassionate City project entitled Seeds of Compassion along with some inspiring young students and their compassionate wishes for their city. You can access the video recordings of this day here:

The purpose of this project was to plant seeds of compassion to promote Ballarat as a caring city underpinned by the compassionate wishes of its future leaders. Nearly 100 wishes were received from Ballarat students in Year 6 and Year 10 classes and the collected wishes were subject to a content analysis and were written up under the following five headings: 1) INCLUSION - ACCEPTANCE – BELONGING 2) RESPECT - UNITY – PEACE 3) SAFE – PROTECTED – COMPASSIONATE 4) COHESION – HARMONY – EQUALITY 5) THRIVING – MEANING – POTENTIAL  The student’s wishes will be distributed across Ballarat, and they will also be circulated to cities around the world who have signed the Charter for Compassion. By sharing this report globally, we offer these cities a valuable demonstration project for them to consider replicating, and Compassionate Ballarat will continue to work with the City Council to make tangible, as many of these wishes as possible.