Examples of how the Media can support Compassionate Community Initiatives

Much of the work that is needed when kicking off a community wide initiative like Compassionate Community is about increasing the awareness of your initiative. The Compassionate City Charter highlights the role for media to help increase awareness, this is framework many of us use as a guide for their compassionate community. Below are some example of media covering initiatives in Canada so far:

Compassionate Ottawa - this initiative has had several pieces in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.

1. New Ottawa program aims to help people live well at the end of their lives (Feb 6, 2019): https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/new-ottawa-program-aims-to-he…

2. Busing: How we can truly support those facing death or grieving over loss (February 4, 2019): https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/busing-how-we-can-truly-su…

Compassionate Communities in the Montreal area - West Island Palliative Care Residence is working to support several Compassionate Community initiatives in the Montreal area and CTV is helping to increase the awareness.

3. Kick off of a new institute and a look at Compassionate Communities: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1392936

4. New palliative care research institute hopes to create model to end-of-life-care: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/new-palliative-care-research-institute-hope…

The media can also help with normalizing the conversation on important topics such as serious-illness, caregiving, dying, and grieving. Here is a recent example in the news when a family lost their 5 children in a fire and the local news did a piece on dealing with loss, as the local community was really struggling with this tragedy.

5. Coping with loss: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1619409