Mayor of Taunton: We’re signing the Charter for compassion!

This August I was delighted to visit Taunton’s wonderful flower show in Vivary Park and beyond proud to hear from visiting traders and tourists alike about how wonderfully welcoming the people of Taunton are.

Of course, I know this and that’s one of the reasons why I chose to make Taunton my home.

Taunton declared itself a Sanctuary town last year and has welcomed many lovely Ukrainian ladies and their children, but in fact, it has been welcoming refugees, since the 1940s, friends in our twin town of Königslutter informed me.

An elderly lady remembers being sent here as a child during WW2 because her home in Hanover had been destroyed.

It therefore seems natural for Taunton Town Council to embrace the Charter for Compassion, introduced by one of the directors of Sangha House, Andy Spragg, who is the official UK representative of the Charter.

I and the deputy mayor will be signing the Charter on behalf of the people of Taunton during our Taunton Together Festival – mostly because we are a town of compassionate people and partly to confront those, who seem to have less understanding of what this means.

‘Compassion’ is one step higher than empathy. It means that we will act upon our feelings of kindness, whenever we are given the opportunity.

I like to think that we would all take action to help others in need but recognise that we don’t all have the same capacity and knowledge and some of us are in need of help ourselves.

We’re lucky to have many people in our town who work in the caring professions: care workers, doctors, nurses and teachers but there are others who are just as compassionate and step up to help their neighbours, people in need or by volunteering in the community.

I was particularly moved when I visited Selworthy School Open Day in July, to find out how many people, who have children with special educational needs themselves – and you can imagine what a hard life this is – have set up organisations to support others.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful friends groups, who do such a fantastic job of making the most of our parks.

Three of our parks were recently awarded the prestigious Green Flag award for another year and I was delighted to go along to celebrate this success with them and find about the hard work that they do to make these parks extra special.

Three of Taunton's park have been awarded the Green Flag award. (Image: Taunton Town Council)

This is also why the high sheriff of Somerset will also be signing the Charter on behalf of the whole of Somerset and will be drawing attention to the need for more volunteers, by hosting ‘Join in Somerset’, in Hammet Street, as part of the Taunton Together Festival on September 28.

Community and volunteer organisations will be setting up stalls along the street, so that you can see what a wide variety of organisations and opportunities there are where you can step up and volunteer.

We particularly need more young people in our town to participate in community service. It’s a great way of developing transferable skills and meeting people.

Please take a look, find out what’s going on and think about what you could do. I don’t expect everyone to rush forward and make such a big commitment, but if you could help, in any way that would be wonderful.

But in general, just do what you can. It’s more about cultivating the right mind-set – and following in the footsteps of those who practice compassion on a daily basis.