We’re gathering educators, civic leaders, healthcare workers, artists, entrepreneurs, faith voices, and neighbors like you for a powerful conversation about becoming a Compassionate City where empathy, dignity, and care guide everything we do.
In a time marked by unprecedented complexity and social fragmentation, the greatest strength a city can cultivate is not just resilience or innovation—but compassion. Fort Myers has long been a place of natural beauty, cultural richness, and enduring community spirit. Now, we are called to take a bold step forward: to become a Compassionate City, weaving compassion and interconnectedness into the fabric of our civic identity.
This initiative is not symbolic. It is a practical and visionary commitment to elevate the well-being of every resident—across generations, neighborhoods, and backgrounds. Compassion in civic life means designing policies that see the most vulnerable, fostering creative spaces where all voices matter, and reimagining leadership as service rather than status.
By convening our civic leaders—elected officials, educators, spiritual voices, artists, and community advocates—we are setting the table for a new civic conversation: one that transcends partisanship and rekindles our shared humanity.
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson
This is not about political ideologies; it is about moral imagination. Fort Myers can lead—not by power, but by heart. Let us begin the process together: to listen deeply, act boldly, and chart a path that future generations will thank us for. The time is now to declare: Compassion is our civic virtue.