tEAm news #57 | 15.09.21
A new term
We hope for all of you with kids/grandkids/god children/neighbour’s kids etc going back to school or off to university, some for the first time and some back into their usual routines, has all gone well!
Welcome to a new term here at Empathy Action!
“We are all in the same boat and called to work together so that there will be no more walls that separate us, no longer others, but only a single “we”, encompassing all of humanity.”
When Pope Francis met Little Amal
Dates
Mondays, 9 - 915 (on Zoom) - Moment of Prayer: a moment to pause, prayer, light candles for our work & team. All welcome!
Link here (Meeting ID: 708 452 7633 Passcode: empathy)27th Sept (eve) - EA Board meeting
NEW DATES! Wed 20 – Fri 22 Oct, Mon 8 – Wed 10 Nov & Fri 12 Nov: Tunbridge Wells Puppetry Festival workshops with Strange Face - Empathy Exercises. (Here’s their flyer)
13th October: Eli & The Golem, Strange Face’s new piece on displacement - which excerpts will feature in our school sessions (Trinity Arts Centre, TW)
19th October: Eli & The Golem at Folkestone … with Little Amal!
‘COP 26’ - some of the focus for the Autumn will be around the UN Climate Change ‘Conference of Parties’ (aka ‘COP’) 26th gathering in Glasgow (31st October - 12th November). We are hoping to promote The High Life and take up of this new workshop around this time.
Future programmes/Working on
Some of the events that we are working on behind the scenes
The High Life (THL) workshops (TBC) to help people ‘just interested’ to use this new immersive workshop at their school or group.
Developing a DJ Lite (or 2 Tent version) that we can start to deliver again but with fewer people.
Finding more people! Particularly to help with some of the core operations.
A handicrafts campaign for Sept (with a focus to additionally fundraise for Afghanistan families relocating in the area & a Syrian student who is just starting university)
Christmas campaign for handicraft sales
Our Livelihood Development Fund. 10% of donations and income from sims (and in some cases designated funding) is set aside for this special fund that we can use to fund work (via small grants/gifts/investments/loans) that will fit with our mission and programmes - it will allow us to build strategic partnerships, invest in people and keep fresh stories for our work. We’re going to be doing more with this fund over the coming period. Previously we’ve used it to help resettling refugees, medical costs, back to school costs for resettling families, schools work in South Sudan, helping local Eritreans meet with others in their community and more.
News updates
Article in the Geographical Association! Paul has submitted an article on The High Life which will feature later this month. Exciting!
The Barn is pretty much ready to receive the gear from its temporary home in Tonbridge. John has done a great job of fitting guttering front and back and painting the front to match the other barns. The floor has been sealed to keep the dust down and Richard has installed lights and racks for all the marquee tubes. We now need a dry day when six of us can be available to make the move.
The need for new people to help rebuild EA. One of our usual schools, Headington (Oxford) - we’ve been there pretty much every year since 2014 recently asked whether we could run THL for them in Nov…. We have had to make the heavy decision to say we can’t run this for you (we simply don’t have enough people nor in a position to do so - at this time). We also don’t have the people to run our usual programmes (TPT or DJ) but we can support groups run it themselves.
We’d love to build up our team again, but until then we are fairly limited in what we can offer. If you know people who would like to help a small charity (and have the time to give) out to be regulars or even train to be facilitators of sims - we’d love to hear from them.Office - It’s nice to see the office being used again! Fuzzy and Angie will be in on Tues mornings and Heather P on Weds (with Alison T zooming in).
Strange Face (our partner for the Tunbridge Wells Puppetry Festival) has asked if we would like to help them with their show whilst Little Amal will be in Folkestone on the 19th October. This will be a good warm up ahead of our sessions together in schools later on. Currently Bennett, Skinners Kent Academy and St Gregs are interested.
Also our friends at the Tunbridge Wells Puppetry Festival are using shops in Royal Victoria Place (like we did when we ran Desperate Journey’s there in 2019) - they have made an enquiry to the manager, on our behalf, for the use of another shop for the possible 2 Tent Desperate Journeys tests and trials. If we get it, it will be for around 6 weeks. We’ll definitely need to re-build a new team for this. Know people who might be interested in helping us?
Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees are interested in selling their new Veggie Syrian cookbook (partnership with Sevenoaks School) through our Empathy Store. They feel we are a good fit given our history with them and Sevenoaks School. We’re exploring the feasibility right now. However, it’s great to see a project that emerged during our many Desperate Journeys with the school (and with the SWR vols) feature on our website - a great success story to host!
A Brunel University student has been in touch about how we run simulations for her work in Thailand for her teaching work on sustainability & the SDGs. Nothing to do with last year’s interview about the Peace Doves with Sandy and Ben, but it was following a link made in Myanmar! We sent her THL as a resource to consider using.
“I look forward to working with you” - A short intro to Vanya from Taiwan ahead of her volunteering placement with us next year.
Can you help?
Know any…
teachers that you can share The High Life with? If so please forward them to them this page. Thank you!
others to send THL to? Businesses, House groups, charities or more… we’d love to use our team to help the sending this new resource around the world… particularly ahead of the UK COP event next month. Thank you!
TBC (c Oct) - we’re looking for 6 people for a day as we hire a van and look to move our stuff from Tonbridge to the new Barn.
19th October (day): 1-2 people needed for Little Amal associated workshop with Strange Face in Folkestone.
A room for Vanya (a future volunteer - there’s a short video from her beneath) between c7th Jan - 11th March, 2022. We’re on the look out for somewhere local (ideally in TW, but also open to other opportunities) for Vanya to stay whilst volunteering with us early next year. She says she’d love to stay with someone and be part of their family over this period and get a flavour of the country… and loves to cook!
Regular volunteers. We will need some hands to help us do some of the day-to-days bits and pieces. Can you spare a morning or day (or more a week) to help with some of the operations (admin, handicrafts, event planning, sims work, social media, comms and more) -OR dod you know someone who we could speak to about this? We need to build up some regular people that we can count upon to do more.
Coming Soon! EA latest Christmas product made by our friends who made the Rainbows and unicorns from South Africa.
A quick shout out to these two lovely vols… and one for your prayers as Colin goes in this week for the next steps in his stem cell treatment. He got the late call up for a bed on Monday eve. xo
