Are you ready to bring applied compassion into the world in a tangible way?

Our training will equip you with the skills and tools you need to be an Ambassador of Applied Compassion in real-world settings. 

Training Objective: 

This Applied Compassion Training will prepare you to become a motivating force for Applied Compassion: someone who embodies a high level of mastery and expertise in facilitating a compassionate response in real-world settings. You will leave this training fully equipped with the skill-set you need to effectively create and sustain transformative change.

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Upon completion of this training, you will receive a Certificate of Completion through ACA (Applied Compassion Academy) and CCARE (The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research & Education) at Stanford University. This training and the certificate provide you with the credibility, skills, resources, network and experience needed to become an Educator, Facilitator, Consultant, and Ambassador of Applied Compassion. ACT knows, as do you, that one solution does not fit all situations. The ACT program will equip you with the toolkit necessary to apply compassionate responses and solutions within the organizations, communities, and institutions in which you live and work.

Training Description: 

Due to current public health and travel guidelines, the ACT 2021 training will be offered as a virtual program. 

Over the course of this 11-month program, we will meet virtually for 3 immersion retreats online. Due to the experiential nature of these retreats, live participation is required online. These virtual immersion retreats are highly interactive. The retreats are scheduled at the beginning of the program, mid-way through, and at the end of the training, in the Pacific Time zone.

If public health and travel guidelines permit, we will also offer an in-person retreat option, onsite at Stanford University on the same dates, in addition to the virtual retreats. We anticipate being able to notify participants of this additional option 12 weeks prior to each immersive retreat date. 

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In between the virtual immersion retreats, we will have twice monthly Zoom sessions (both in person and on-demand).  The first session will be a didactic/practice session which will combine teaching and experiential processes associated with that month’s teaching content.  The second session will be an opportunity to bring questions, challenges, and real-world issues into a smaller group and receive direct coaching from ACA founders. Additional sessions will be offered to give participants a chance to engage in processes and practices that promote personal growth and transformation.  There will also be optional group sessions for participants to ask questions and receive mentoring from ACA founders in regards to designing their Applied Compassion Capstone Projects.

The Four Dimensions of the ACT Program:

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I. Personal Transformation: Transform the World ~ Transform Yourself

During the course of the 11-month training, we devote significant attention to each participant’s emotional intelligence and experiential access to applied compassion. Becoming an Ambassador of Applied Compassion means ‘walking your talk.’  This program will include a deeply reflective inward journey, and experiential processes and practices designed to support your personal development.

A core aim of ACT is a focus on how participants cultivate, embody and sustain inner attitudes of compassion and self-awareness.  We believe that in order to truly be an ambassador who can model applied compassion in challenging settings and circumstances, each participant’s own inner development is of the utmost importance.

II. Curated Content: Essential Principles of Applied Compassion

The Applied Compassion Training is a broad-based approach, rather than teaching a specific technique or protocol. It's designed to equip participants with principles, skills, tools and practices that foster a compassionate response to the endless triggers and challenges we all have to contend with in our day-to-day lives. 

The ACT program will equip the individual trainees with the attitudes and resources necessary to design their own compassion-based offerings, talks, and programs founded on best principles and practices. Certified graduates will function in the role of an Educator, Facilitator, Consultant, and Ambassador of Applied Compassion.

III. Compassion in Action : Applied Compassion Capstone Projects

An essential part of becoming an Educator, Facilitator, Consultant, and Ambassador of Applied Compassion is to be a representative of compassion, bringing it into your workplaces and professional lives and into your personal and family daily life relationships. Capstone Projects are based on the targeted environment that participants want to affect change or offer, facilitate or teach compassion-based approaches. 

A requirement for completion, the  Applied Compassion Capstone Project is something

that each participant will create, deliver, and report back on during the course of the

ACT program. Participants will begin designing these projects right from the start of

the training and will be required to deliver them by Summer 2021, reporting back to

the faculty by October 2021. 

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Throughout the course of the training, participants will receive support and mentoring

as they create a Capstone Project based on the targeted environment they want to offer, facilitate, or teach compassion-based practices and approaches. In some cases, the environment may be a workplace or professional setting or it may be a community setting in which the participant volunteers. It might be a project that focuses on social

or cultural issues (e.g., inclusivity or climate change). It may even be familial.

An example of an ACT Capstone project might be to develop a workshop or other offering that integrates compassionate principles and practices to address specific and unique issues around burnout, in the environments in which the individual participant lives and works.

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IV. A Community of Applied Compassion Practice

Throughout the ACT program, participants come together in multiple ways as a community focused on support and practice, small mentoring groups and ambassador teams, as well as continued engagement within a robust network of alumni.

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What ACT 2020 Ambassadors are saying:

"The ACT Training has brought together like-minded individuals focused on bringing compassion-based work into the world. The diverse professional backgrounds and areas of expertise offer participants a global perspective on how each of us are capable of changing the world one compassionate act at a time. I’m enriched both professionally and personally by the community at large and inspired by the commitment the trainers and mentors bring to this training."  

~Yvonne Tally - Author/Speaker/Consultant and Founder of Poised™, a fitness and lifestyle company.

She has been a health and wellness consultant and entrepreneur for over twenty years.

"The biggest impact of the ACT Training is how aware I am of the opportunities  to be compassionate- at home, at work, at the coffee shop, etc. I now start my day with a practice that includes setting my intentions around being an Ambassador of Compassion and actively choosing an action that reflects who I truly am: a loving, caring and compassionate person!" 

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~Ratnesh Sharma: Director, VeloCloud Partner and Distribution GTM at VMWare,

a global software leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility.

"The ACT Training has prepared me to become a motivating force for embodying compassion and applying it in real world situations -in my own way. ACT has given me a theoretical, as well as a practical framework of principles, resources, and tools that allow me to feel confident, empowered, and ready to ACT as a global Ambassador of Applied Compassion." 

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~Barbara Piper: Founder, BeRooted - the lead Academy within the Institute for Positive Health (iPH) in The Netherlands.