tEAm news #82 | 8.6.22 — Empathy Action

Rebooting Empathy Action - a note from the Director

Following a long pandemic, we are finally starting to feel a return to business this month.

Hot off the back of last month’s Desperate Journey’s trials, we’re looking to do more with this new(er) piece (there’s 3 versions available to us: a ‘story’ one, a ‘story+’ one and a full ‘journey’ one). We’d love another staging opportunity in the autumn. We’re currently on the look out for a location to set up for a longer period.

We also have 8-9 UCL students in the office next week devising campaigns for the next year - Cam & Yasmin (from UCL) have been working hard to make this possible! Then our signature Poverty Trap simulations are also making their return at Wally Hall & Canford Schools later on - amazingly we have volunteer teams for both now (phew!)… and new products & partners are coming through!

We’ll need even more help (opportunities for involvement beneath) and also more support as things slowly start to pick up. Thanks for being there and we’re only as good as our team! Onwards and upwards!

- Ben :)

Dates

MOMENT OF PRAYER (term time) - Mondays 9-9:15: a moment to pause and pray for our work & team. All welcome!
Link here (Meeting ID: 708 452 7633 Passcode: empathy)
13-17th June: UCL Consultancy Challenge
26-27th June: Wally Hall, Sevenoaks The Poverty Trap day programme (TPT + Empathy Exercises)
28-29th June: Canford School, Wimborne TPT (overnight)
NEW: Oct - we’re looking for a local place to stage Desperate Journeys (DJ) 2 room version
NEW: Late November: TPT Headington School

SIGN UP SHEET to indicate your availability - We are using a new Sign Up Sheet (with different tabs) for volunteers wanting to help out. Please indicate your availability.

Can you help this fortnight?

DJ - next Tuesday! - we need a few helpers next Tuesday (14th) morning (early-ish start at 8.30 until 12) to run a version of Desperate Journeys at the Office for the UCL students.
Remote task: research needed to obtain some fresh narratives for The Poverty Trap. Here’s a description and list of what we need.

Other Updates

Service and Partnerships Conference at Sevenoaks School went well for Paul and Heather. Paul shared that he had “A deeper appreciation of the time constraints in schools” and the opportunity to share The High Life to around 80 participants (including a teacher from Eton, who shared ”about possibly using it in their environmental module in the Spring term”!). Way to go Paul & Heather!
The Vegetarian Syrian Cookbook has arrived and up on the Empathy Store! - please share to others who would like to purchase a copy. EA will get £1 per sale and the rest goes to the amazing work of Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees. (Gift edition also available - includes bracelet)
The Reboot the Future pins crafted from ammunition shells through our partners in Cambodia are completed(!) now and ready for delivery to the client.

Following on from the last TN, we wanted to share exclusively with our team more of the content ideas, or ‘empathy exercises’ that we are researching and hoping to use with others to help inspire greater compassionate action.

This fortnight, we’re sharing an exercise idea from psychologist, Arthur Aron who says:

“Four minutes of eye contact brings people closer to each other better than everything else”.

The idea is simple: invite strangers to sit across from one another and look into each others’ eyes, silently, without interruption for four minutes. In this video, Amnesty put it to the test. It’s also been used at festivals as a “we want to see you” booth. Try it at home and let us know how you get on. We’d love feedback!

What we are watching, listening, reading, attending…

“This is childhood stolen” - according to our partners Dalit candles when talking about Child Brides in India. They shared the following stats that we will look to use in The Poverty Trap:

Nearly 40% of all the world’s ‘child brides’ (those married before they reach 18) are Indian.
Many of them are married before the age of 15 - 7% of women aged 20-24 were married at the age of 15 that equates to 4 million girls

Other reads, clips, podcasts, events, films from around the team

Vax/Anti-Vax: “relating not debating” Empathy Dinners podcast with Andy Hix (Chris’ son) returns with a powerful conversation here.
To Sell is Human - Daniel H. Pink (from TED Talk fame). We’re looking into this as we look to empower our audiences (or as he calls it “moving people”) to act compassionately.
We’ve been inspired by Museum of Modern Art’s instagram account
And finally our friend Dave Cunningham (Head of Geography) at Headington School (where we have run TPTs since 2014) shared with us a tune that he’s just released and said “not just a geographer!”.

Ways to help us reboot Empathy Action

Volunteering - watch out for pop up opportunities here in TN and we really need a bunch of regular helpers (eg a few hours or even a half day (or more!) a week as a regular commitment that we can build upon). Give us call to have a chat, we’d love to hear!
Share the news - please forward, share any social media posts. This really improves our reach.
Introduce us! - please introduce us to any prospective volunteers, customers or clients… we’d value your help in these introductions. This is a powerful way of building EA up again.
Regular giving - could you spare us the price of a cuppa (£2.50) a week? As a small org, a little really goes a very long way… and we need a lot of help this year as we try to reboot Empathy Action. Your help would mean a lot at this crucial time.
Via smile.amazon - link beneath to enable amazon to give money to EA
Thank you!