This event is hosted in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project, which tackles the problem of broken social trust that has left Americans divided, lonely, and in social gridlock. Weave connects, supports, and invests in local leaders stepping up to weave a new, inclusive social fabric where they live. The project was founded by New York Times columnist and author David Brooks at the Aspen Institute.
Speakers
Frances Kraft serves as the senior manager for engagement for Weave: The Social Fabric Project at The Aspen Institute. After a career in marketing communications, she left the corporate world to teach fifth-grade outside Chicago while examining inequities in the U.S. education system from the inside. She quickly realized that strong relationships between teachers, students, families, and the community were critical to providing connection and changing systems. As a result, her subsequent non-profit work in education centered on community organizing and restorative practices. These same principles apply to her role with Weave, where she builds on relational trust to grow and support the weaver community. This work extends to her doctoral research, which she will complete this year, on whether relational dialogue affects civic empathy. Frances and her husband Jeff raised two daughters in Chicago and currently live in Washington, DC.
Ashley Esposito is a 2021 Baltimore Weaver Awardee, an elected school board member, and the Executive Director of Baltimore Renters United. She spent her formative years in Southern Arizona, where her upbringing instilled in her a profound commitment to empathy and civic responsibility. As a dynamic force for change, Ash seamlessly blends her roles as a mother, artist, community weaver, and advocate for justice. Her approach is rooted in meeting people where they are, ensuring everyone feels a sense of belonging, healing from trauma, and courageously working through discomfort and challenges. In Baltimore, she actively builds bridges within her community, embracing diversity, and fostering inclusivity to create a more equitable and connected society. She lives with her family in Southwest Baltimore, USA.
Peter Waiswa, an accountant from Kamuli in eastern Uganda, is the founder and convenor of Uganda Compassion Connectors.
Dr Julian Abel became a consultant in palliative care 2001, working initially at a district general hospital and a hospice. For more than a decade he has become increasingly involved in finding ways of building compassionate communities around people at the end of life. He has run projects at local, regional and national levels. He was Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International. He is an international keynote speaker and has published regularly on models of public health palliative care. Abel and Professor Allan Kellehear are the editors of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care.
Since 2016 he has worked with Frome Medical Practice in Somerset in developing a new model of primary care combined with compassionate communities. The health outcomes of this model have been dramatic, with this being the first intervention that has been effective in reducing whole population emergency admissions. Compassionate communities is one of the most effective therapeutic tools we have in improving length of life and well being. Along with Professor Kellehear, Julian has formed Compassionate Communities UK, of which he is Director.
The charity has been formed to develop the broader roll out compassionate communities in primary care and public health palliative and end of life care. Projects are underway in multiple areas in the UK and internationally.
Dr Julian Abel is joint author of The Compassion Project, along with the prize winning novelist Lindsay Clarke. The book describes the background to the Frome Project, its implementation and the wider implications of the application of compassion both in medicine and in society at large. He runs a podcast, Survival of the Kindest about compassion, its presence, its absence and the consequences of both.