Featured Courses

The range of courses offered in the Featured Courses section of the Charter Education Institute stem from assisting individuals, teams and organizations around the world on understanding the mind and heart of a compassionate community and explore processes that create paths to design sustainable action plans to meet local, national and international challenges.  In addition, just as many of us engage in different circles of culture and society, so does the Charter for Compassion.  The Charter supports work in twelve sectors: art, business, education, environment, healthcare, interfaith (religion and spirituality), peace, science and research, social justice, social services, restorative justice, and women and girls.  Consequently, course work is being desired and implemented in each of these sectors.  

All courses offered at the Charter Education Institute offer a Certificate at their completion.

We post ongoing and previous courses offered by CEI here.  You can visit this page periodically to see current listing of courses which usually change monthly or bi-monthly.

Becoming Whole Together
-- Gender Equity and Reconciliation International

Start Date: Tuesday August 10, 2021
End Date: Tuesday September 21, 2021
Time: 8 a.m. Pacific Time
Duration: 7 weeks (19.5 hours total)
Format: All sessions will be on Zoom.

Cost: The full price for Becoming Whole Together Training is $250.  We offer this course based on what you can afford. If $250 exceeds your financial means, then pay what you can based on the options provided during Registration.

Registration: Now Open!

Join us for this interactive and experiential online course, and embark upon a new form of spiritual healing and reconciliation work that builds trust and compassionate communication through a skillful combination of interactive activities, spiritual practice, and transformative group process. 

This carefully facilitated course creates a safe forum where we can awaken a deeper empathy and understanding and begin to discover practical pathways towards healing and transforming our relationships.  Together we can begin to re-form relations between women and men without blame or shame, and move through the often unspoken, unconscious attitudes, fears and reactions around gender and sexuality, to reclaim the mutual harmony and reverence that is our birthright.

Click here to learn more about the course. Registration Opening this Soon.

Pathway to Awareness, Acceptance and Compassion
-- Introducing 25 contemplative practices

Start Date: August 30, 2021
Cost: $50 US
Duration: 6 weeks
Facilitator: Rakhee Sharma

Registration: Coming late July

Do you struggle with striving for “more” despite having accomplished much in your life, and having your basic needs—and more—met?

Do you find yourself submerged in habits and patterns with people and circumstances, where you believe that others need to change, rather than looking inward?

We are so often attracted to finding the quickest and easiest path to happiness and fulfilment. But is that path the most effective and compassionate?

This course will help you to recognise your suffering and its causes, and to transform suffering into mindfulness, compassion, peace, joy and inner freedom.

It includes learning 25 contemplative practices through reflective exercises, videos, audio meditations, stories and more, through our online platform, as well as deepening our practice with live Zoom sessions, and sharing in small breakout groups.

“Most people are afraid of suffering, but suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.”

 – Thich Nhat Hanh

Click here to learn more about the course. Registration Opening soon.

Compassionate Integrity Training - Fall 2021

Start Date: Wednesday September 15, 2021
End Date: Wednesday November 17, 2021
Time: 2 p.m. E.S.T.
Duration: 10 weekly sessions, 2 hours each

Registration: Opening August, 2021
Registration will be limited to 75 participants

Cost: The full price for Compassionate Integrity Training is $250.00. Life University’s guiding principle of "Lasting Purpose: To Give, To Do, To Love, To Serve – Out of a Sense of Abundance" allows us to offer this course based on what you can afford. If $250 exceeds your financial means, then pay what you can based on the options provided during Registration.

Have you ever wondered how you could cultivate the compassion called for in the Charter or help others cultivate that compassion? Compassionate Integrity Training is a great place to start!

CIT is a resiliency-informed program that cultivates human values as skills, so we can thrive as individuals, and a society, within a healthy environment.  By learning skills to calm our bodies and mind, becoming more emotionally aware, learning to practice compassion for ourselves and others, as well as engaging with compassion in complex systems, we can build towards compassionate integrity: the ability to live one’s life in accordance with one’s values with a recognition of common humanity, our basic orientation to kindness and reciprocity.

Click here to learn more about the course. Registration Opening in August.

NEW!: Are you interested in taking The Compassionate Integrity Training but you're not sure? Join us for a free one-hour program for a 'Taste of CIT'. Two dates available:

Taste of CIT – August 25, 2021 at 2 pm Eastern Time
Register in advance for this meeting.

Taste of CIT – September 1, 2021 a 2 pm Eastern Time
Register in advance for this meeting.

Fostering Compassionate City Culture
-- A Guide to Human Flourishing

Start Date: October 4, 2021
Duration: 4 weeks
Cost: $45 U.S.
Facilitator: Diane Kalen-Sukra

Registration: Opening in September

Our capacity to collaborate and innovate together has been undermined by the increase in incivility, toxic behaviour and divisiveness in our homes, schools, workplaces, and the public square. This erodes our sense of belonging, community, and well-being. 

We need each other to address the complex challenges facing our communities and our cities – from aging infrastructure to climate change, homelessness, mental health and addiction issues among many others.

To thrive, our communities depend on our ability to revive the art of living and working well together. In this thought-provoking and inspiring course, you’ll be taken on a journey from “Bullyville”, a broken, toxic and divided community to “Sustainaville”, a safe, inclusive, thriving and resilient community.

The successful journey includes a renewal of pro-social human values and practices rooted in compassion, secular ethics, civic education and systemic culture transformation. 

Compassionate cities are made up of compassionate people. This course orients you and then provides you with practical tools to be the change.

Click here to learn more about the course. Registration Opening this Fall.

The Gift of Forgiveness

Start Date: October 25, 2021
Duration: 4 weeks
Cost: $30 U.S.
Facilitator: Deborah Briggs

Registration: Opening Early October

With “The Gift of Forgiveness”, we are welcoming back Deborah Briggs, instructor and author of one of the Charter’s most successful courses, Growing Whole, Not Old - Aging in the Pandemic Age (Formerly "Awakening the Sage Within"). In that course she introduced hundreds to the concept of Sage-ing®.

During this workshop, we will delve into ‘forgiveness’: one of the core concepts of the Sage-ing® Movement. We will develop greater compassion for ourselves as we begin to free ourselves from the painful burdens we have carried.  This course provides us with the opportunity to live more fully once we learn that things we saw as negative can be transformed into the foundation for living more fully.

By exploring the concept of forgiveness, we can uncover pearls of wisdom and experience the healing power of reframing experiences. As we begin to repair painful relationships, we can develop a deeper and more universal self-love. This is pivotal to the work of wise aging and to developing compassion.

More information and Registration coming soon!.

An Ongoing Course

Compassion Integrity Training (CIT) for Educators