comprised of 50 individuals selected from an international pool of applicants. Graduates who fulfill
all program requirements, including a period of supervised teaching, will be certified to teach
CCARE’s Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) course. The teacher training program consists of
academic courses like the Science of Compassion and Philosophical Perspectives on
Compassion. The program also emphasizes meditation practice, group facilitation skills and
methods for collecting evaluative data pertaining to participant experience.
The rationale for the teacher training program is to help meet the demand for compassion
education in a variety of sectors. Participants in this first program come from diverse fields,
including environmental protection, K-12 education, the department of defense, physicians and a
range of healthcare providers, researchers, psychotherapists, corporate consultants and veterinary
medicine practitioners, to name but a few.
Conclusion
We are heartened to see the impact that this training has had in a diversity of settings in the past
two years that it has been offered. We anticipate developing further insight into the mechanisms of
the processes in the protocol as research is conducted on the course in a variety of settings and
across populations. Throughout this process, we remain committed to CCARE’s mission to “allow
humans to become more compassionate and to engage more readily in altruistic behaviors
towards themselves and others”.
Acknowledgements
With gratitude to Dr. James Doty, the CCARE staff, course participants and the contributors to the
CCT protocol.
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