Kindness & Compassion
Spearheading the kindness initiative in Southwest Florida — supporting projects that make kindness visible, tangible, and systemic across the region.
Our Mission
To spawn and support projects that increase the visibility and reach of kindness and compassion in Southwest Florida, with the ultimate goal of transforming the community into one of compassion.
Our Vision
A Southwest Florida where people greet each other and are kind to each other, where civic engagement is strong, where neighbors gather for more than commerce, and where everyone knows that someone has their back — without needing a hurricane to prove it.
Why This Table Exists
Society is drifting toward fear and distrust — yet once people get to know their neighbors, they tend to like them. This table works to move our community past apathy toward conscious, genuine kindness: not surface-level niceness, but the deeper, sincere kind that sees and honors the humanity of every person we encounter.
Kindness and compassion are the social glue that keeps communities together. Without them, the only social groups left are compulsory ones — and when those end, people are left isolated and vulnerable. Every day, each of us can make the choice to be kind; this table exists to help our community make that choice together.
Current Focus
- Launch region-wide acts-of-kindness campaigns with local partners.
- Make kindness tangible and operational — turning compassion from a value into visible local projects.
- Create more places and occasions for neighbors to gather, from block parties to shared community spaces.
Our Values
Compassion
When we feel the pain of others, we are moved to act to remove that pain.
Hope
The belief that our actions matter and can make a difference.
Respect
An honoring of the humanity of the other.
Belonging
An essential human need to be part of something larger than oneself.
Courtesy
A shared social contract of behavior that allows for a restoration of civility.
Kindness
The action of compassion — simple gestures that can make another's day better.
When you let your values lead you, it changes the way you act and the way you engage with the world.
What We Do
Kindlee: 10,000 Acts of Kindness
A community campaign to spark and count ten thousand acts of kindness across Southwest Florida.
One Million Acts of Kindness at FGCU
A campus-scale kindness campaign in partnership with Florida Gulf Coast University.
Kindgram
Sharing kindness through messages and stories that travel person to person.
Neighborhood block parties
Bringing neighbors together for gatherings that build real connection close to home.
Kindness Summit
A gathering that brings the region together around kindness and compassion in action.
A shared community space
Exploring a dedicated "third space" where the community can gather, host events, and support one another — inspired by community-gathering models elsewhere.
An Impact Story
When Hurricane Ian tore through Southwest Florida, neighbors showed up for each other in extraordinary ways. The storm revealed something this table believes deeply: our community already has an enormous capacity for kindness and compassion. The work now is to make that capacity an everyday practice — so it doesn't take a disaster for neighbors to step up for one another.
Our Journey
Kindness & Compassion is one of the original Compassionate SWFL action tables, and its work sits closest to the heart of the initiative's mission. From the first community conversations through the Kindness Summit and the launch of this website, the table has been at the forefront of saying — out loud and in public — that Southwest Florida wants to be a kind community.
Our Accomplishments
- Hosted the Kindness Summit.
- Helped launch the Compassionate SWFL website.
- Sustained, growing participation — a large group of engaged residents keeping the momentum alive.
- Collaboration with FGCU's ROCK Center and local interfaith groups.
Where We’re Headed
- Launch the acts-of-kindness campaign region-wide.
- Make kindness tangible — operationalize it in schools, businesses, and neighborhoods.
- Convene a summit for county and city officials across Southwest Florida.
- Create a kindness workshop the community can take anywhere.
- Plug kindness into existing community events like Art Walk and Music Walk.
Get Involved
Kindness makes Southwest Florida a more attractive place to live. With more support, the table could host more block parties, create dedicated community gathering spaces, and help anyone in the community throw events that bring neighbors together.
Help we’re looking for
- Fundraising and development experience
- Entrepreneurial energy for building new kindness projects