What is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction?

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week program that teaches mindfulness meditation as a way to reduce stress and improve wellbeing. Originally developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, MBSR has been researched extensively and shown to help people manage stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

New information about America's veterans was just released this month. It tells us who they are, how they're doing, and what help they need. This matters for everyone who wants to support the people who served our country.

Why Houston Should Care

• For Helpers: Learn what veterans really need, not what we guess they need

• For City Leaders: Get facts about veteran health, jobs, and housing problems

• For Business Owners: Understand the skills veterans have and the help they need

• For Community Groups: See where veterans need more support

• For Veterans and Families: Know you're not alone and find help

In times of uncertainty and challenge, human connection becomes our greatest strength. StoryCorps brings together heartwarming stories that remind us of our shared humanity, resilience, and capacity for love and kindness.

StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and preserved more than 75,000 interviews from people of all backgrounds and beliefs. These conversations celebrate the power of listening and remind us what matters most in life.

In a rare moment of agreement across party lines, parents from all political backgrounds share deep concern about the impact of social media and smartphones on their children. This is not a left issue or a right issue. This is a parent issue.

Why This Matters for Your Community

• For Parents: You are not alone in your concerns. Data showing overwhelming consensus across political lines

• For Schools: Evidence supporting phone-free policies that most parents actually want

• For Policy Makers: Rare bipartisan issue where Americans agree on the need for action

• For Tech Companies: Clear signal that parents want better protections for kids online

• For Communities: A unifying issue that can bring people together across differences

What to Expect

The Healing Art Circle provides a supportive space to process emotions about current events and racial suffering through creative expression. Using an adapted Healing Circle format combined with art-making, participants explore their feelings in a safe, judgment-free environment.

Healing Circles Help Us:

Step out of ordinary time into a safe and accepting environment. We listen with compassion and curiosity, honor each other's unique paths to healing, and trust that each person has the guidance they need within them. We rely on the power of silence to access our inner wisdom.

Core Practices:

• Listening with attention: Being fully present for others' experiences

• Speaking with intention: Sharing authentically from the heart

• Tending to the well-being of the circle: Supporting collective healing

What You'll Need:

• Any materials or writing and art supplies you have available

• Any medium you choose (poetry, music, watercolors, collage, pen and paper, digital art, dance, etc.)

• No art experience necessary—all forms of creative expression are welcome

Past participants have created diverse forms of expression including poetry, music, watercolors, collage, paper and pen drawings, digital art, and dance. The focus is on the healing process, not artistic skill.

A German thinker named Friedrich Nietzsche had a word for this feeling: "nihilism" (say: NYE-ill-ism). It means believing nothing really matters. But this feeling is now so common among young Americans that experts call it "cultural nihilism."

Warning Signs

• Fewer young people trust democracy than ever before

• Young people don't trust big institutions like government

• Entire online groups are built around being super negative

• Young people have stopped believing things can get better

Welcome to Compassion Week 2025 - Celebrating 10 years!

This year marks a special milestone—our 10th anniversary of coming together for a full week of inspiration, knowledge-sharing, dialogue, collaborations, and hands-on activities. What began as a simple idea has grown into a vibrant tradition, connecting hearts across Greater Houston by showcasing and sharing tangible examples of Houston’s compassionate culture through various partner and network offerings.

Compassion Week 2025 NOVEMBER 10-16

Save the date for Compassion Week 2025 and it’s core message of SMALL ACTS. BIG CHANGE, highlighting the aspiration that each of us can be a force for good. Our small actions rooted in care and love ripple outward to transform the world, starting right where and how we are. Our theme invites us to explore how everyday gestures—rooted in care, courage, and connection—can spark powerful transformation, rippling outward to create lasting change. And it begins with us, right here, right now.

Whether through learning, practice, service, storytelling, or other types of shared moments, Compassion Week 2025 celebrates the tools we each carry to build a more compassionate world, one act at a time.

PURPOSE OF WORLD KINDNESS DAY

Compassion Week coincides regularly with the week in which World Kindness Day falls, a global day, introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, that promotes the importance of being kind to each other, to yourself, and to the world.

The purpose of this day, celebrated on November 13 of each year, is to help everyone understand that compassion for others is what binds us all together.

Why this matters:

• Less than 1% of human trafficking victims are identified

• Many victims don't even realize they're being trafficked

• Traditional services require victim identification, creating barriers to help

• By serving anyone who has experienced the sex trade, we eliminate these barriers

• This approach increases victim identification and connects more people with life-saving support

Founded in 2015, The Landing started as a dream to reach survivors who were slipping through the cracks. Our founders wanted to create a safe space for survivors, regardless of whether they were ready to leave their current situation.

Why Belonging Matters

Families sign up their kids for swim lessons or sports not just to learn skills, but to make friends and feel like they belong. Seniors come for exercise classes and stay to talk over coffee. People walk through our doors for programs, but they stay because they feel seen and supported.

Recent research shows that feeling connected to others is more important for success than age, race, or income. The Y uses this information to create programs that bring different generations together and help people feel less alone.

Join a life-changing 10-week journey into Cognitively Based Compassion Training. Developed at Emory University and backed by decades of research, CBCT helps you strengthen attention, regulate emotions, and sustain compassion for yourself and everyone you meet.

What is CBCT?

Compassion U™ is a virtual way to learn CBCT (Cognitively Based Compassion Training), a program developed at Emory University in 2005 to cultivate compassion and emotional well-being in adults. CBCT is already transforming the fields of healthcare, mental health, education, and business.

In the face of ongoing humanitarian crisis, Hope Revival offers life-saving psychological and social care in some of the world’s most underserved areas. Their integrated services build long-term resilience while addressing urgent trauma recovery needs. Their work fosters dignity, inclusion, and local capacity in areas affected by war, poverty, and instability.

It all begins with an idea.