tEAm news #61 | 13.10.21
We hope you continue to enjoy this beautiful weather and stay safe and healthy.
This week we are thinking about how we differentiate ourselves from the many others all talking about empathy. We believe our USP is creating an Empathy Moment where participants relate to others in a new and inspiring way.
“We are not thinking machines that feel rather, we are feeling machines that think.”
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)Weds 13th October, 7.30pm Eli & the Golem play (part of the TW Puppetry festival that we will be basing our school workshops on). Also on Friday (through to Sunday) is the Museum of the Moon in Calverley Gardens - looks amazing!
Little Amal (the giant 9 year old Syrian girl puppet) comes to the UK. She’s in Folkestone on the 19th Oct and then in London (22-25th Oct)
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)
25th October - Warehouse move date! From Tonbridge to Penshurst. 6 People required. Richard is orchestrating
‘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.
Christmas campaign on The Empathy Store - involving a few new products! (Stars and Syrian Veggie cook book)
THL featured in
The Geographical Association!
An article Paul wrote has featured in this prestigious magazine and will hopefully draw more attention to the programme and result in more downloads or requests to run it for schools.
Update from Zimbabwe
Our partners in Zimbabwe, One Hope, those who make many of our beaded items, have sent the following update.
We are in our hottest month of the year now - getting up early is the best solution!
We've had a really encouraging start to our farming project. There are 5 ex-Street guys involved. The team have almost finished clearing 2 hectares of land now and will soon be ready to start making holes for planting the maize seed. Some of the surrounding farmers are intrigued that we are not using tractors to plough up the ground as they are. But we are committed to do conservation farming and to keep to zero tillage. Hopefully when others see the results they might get the idea!
Every Tuesday we have been having an informal Bible study, discussion group at the farm with the guys. Yesterday, their land lord, and several other neighbours came along. It is exciting to see that God is using a bunch of ex-street guys to influence the community around them. We are praying for good rains and a bumper harvest.
This comes with love from us all and gratitude for all your prayers and love to us,
Annie xx
P.S. A long time ago there was a little baby called Max who was very sick and we prayed fervently for him for a long time. He has grown up into a wonderful, kind young man, who loves God and has joined our team of One Hope volunteers.
Other News updates
How to THL workshop - Heather & Paul W together with Alison ran a great How to run THL workshop yesterday. Here’s the link to watch it.
A Poland connection (from gaming and simulation making specialists) has resurfaced following our new LinkedIn presence and there maybe a request (early days!) to bring some of our work to universities in Warsaw - particularly around the refugee issue. They were sharing how this is area that is not discussed and would like to increase the public discourse on this issue.
Wally Hall & St Johns are both looking to work using our materials. Wally Hall are looking to use The High Life next spring (they said “I looked at your website and would love to implement every arm of what you are doing”!) and St John’s are interested in our newer work around the “Empathy Exercises” ( mirroring what we have done with ISY & Brentwood) - they said: “I've spoken with Dan Turvey (the Head) this morning and we are very excited to work with you.”
Meet Trevor (picture beneath). Trevor is keen to be part of our work! He’s currently studying drama at North Kent College (in Tonbridge). He’s also a political refugee from Zimbabwe who arrived at the age of 17 in the UK. He lives in Tunbridge Wells (we were introduced by Tunbridge Wells Welcomes Refugees). Ben spent a few hours interviewing him last week for helping us with the schools workshops with the Puppetry festival. We are hoping that Trevor will be more involved in our work over the coming year. One lovely thing is he is good friends with many of the Eritreans in TW (who we know).
We’ve been researching, collating documents and articles for awhile about a ‘Case for Empathy’ - ie why groups should book us up. Also a means to ground our work in empirical evidence and science. It was insightful to have this pointed out by an academic in the space of Empathy: “[I] think you have so much to say and so much practical and valuable experience that it would be great way to share that experience and inspire others. I think playing to your Unique Selling Point (USP) is really key as you can really write about how you take people through the processes, the challenges, the implications, and that journey, rather than only writing pieces about why it is important - which are good and needed, but increasingly common.”
Blogs - Fran is looking into a few thought pieces for EA blog over the coming year and Heather P ahead of the Primary schools work has drafted a blog on “Empathy Exercises” (which Becky has kindly been editing - thanks Becky!)
