Ashoka’s Empathy Initiative Key Challenges & Principles for Advancing Applied Empathy Preliminary Insights
The CONTEXT Ashoka considers empathy one of the most important issues of our time: an essential skill in a world increasingly defined by change, and one that plays a crucial role in innovation, changemaking, and solving entrenched systemic social problems. This belief—and Ashoka’s Empathy Initiative itself—is largely the product of what we have seen in our Fellowship over the last 30 years. Among our nearly 700 Fellows working with children and young people, and across the broader Fellowship, empathy is an overwhelming pattern. We have found that empathy plays a role in wildly disparate fields and in all corners of the world: challenging our definition of the “other” in the field of disability; reducing enmity between businesses and indigenous communities in order to forge new alliances in environmental conservation; resolving conflict among previously polarized cultural and religious groups. Over the last few months, we have begun to deepen our understanding of how Ashoka Fellows view empathy, the key strategies they're using to cultivate it, and the insights from their pattern-changing work that directs us to how to build a world where every child masters empathy. Through a series of in-depth interviews with Fellows and experts across fields, we aim to: 1. Identify the barriers to a culture where empathy learning is a norm and solutions for overcoming them; 2. Understand the best strategies for cultivating and sustaining empathy in individuals and systems; and 3. Capture the best stories of empathy in action. We intend for this knowledge, when linked to the science in this area and other insights in education and a variety of other fields, to be the basis of a dynamic framework that can be used to inspire and enable schools to develop environments where every child masters empathy. We also hope it will have much broader application for any individual or institution desiring to cultivate empathy. The following trends and insights are a first attempt to distill the patterns. They are by no means intended to be comprehensive, but rather, are a starting point for further conversation and exploration, as we continue to build a robust framework around the key principles for cultivating empathy, and the current obstacles that stand in the way.
A small sampling of Ashoka Fellows are used as potential examples of the principles, though many others could be highlighted as well. Information on the featured Fellows and organizations can be found in the Appendix. The principles represent Ashoka’s preliminary analysis and should not necessarily be attributed directly to the featured Fellows.
The CHALLENGES In recent years, the work of dozens of organizations and leading researchers in fields ranging from neuroscience, to leadership development and organizational management, to social psychology have amassed overwhelming evidence of the importance of empathy: correlating empathic skills with higher performance in reasoning, improved academic achievement, reduced bullying, and myriad other benefits. As science has increasingly shown that we are literally wired for empathy, we sought to answer the question: “Why hasn’t everyone mastered it already?” The challenges below were cited in conversation as barriers that currently stand in the way of advancing empathy in today’s education system and society more widely. 1. Education policy emphasizes test scores. Schools feel pressured to drill their students on traditional academic subjects at the expense of other activities. 2. Traditional measures of success discourage empathy. By measuring success only in terms of grades and academic achievement, "[our] education system forces people to unlearn the empathy they’re born with,” says Bernard Amadei of Engineers Without Borders-USA. “It’s a system based on always seeming strong, on being number one, on contributing to the economy. It’s about celebrating all of these superlative statements.” 3. Empathy is perceived merely as a value or character trait, and instilling values is considered outside the bounds of our education system. “Valuesbased education” is thus typically limited to parochial schools. 4. Today’s high-pressure environment leads teachers to feel overwhelmed. Fearing a loss of control in the classroom and stressed already, teachers resort to command and control techniques with students. 5. Social/economic segregation, self-segregation, information segregation limit exposure. Where various types of walls remain between communities and where customized information may limit our exposure to other viewpoints, stereotypes flourish, causing people to misunderstand or be surprised by others’ feelings or actions. 6. There are no universally recognized standards for measuring empathy. We don't respect what we can't measure.
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These challenges–and many more–have the following effects: 1. Empathy gets crowded out of the learning agenda. Recess, arts-based subjects, and social and emotional learning are widely considered to be unrelated to academic learning and established standards at the state and federal levels. When resources— whether time or money—are scarce, those programs are thus the first to be cut. 2. We’re reactive: Intervention measures tend to focus on “anti-violence” and “anti-bullying,” rather than on pro-social behavior. As a result, schools operate on crisis intervention mode, putting out individual fires, rather than building the skills students need to avoid violence in the first place. 3. Empathy–when addressed at all–fails to permeate today’s school culture. The STRATEGIES & SOLUTIONS A number of patterns are evident across the work of many social entrepreneurs and others that help capture both the strategies for cultivating empathy and the conditions necessary for empathy to thrive. What follows is the start of a collection of how-to principles to equip principals, teachers, parents, students, and other stakeholders with a framework for integrating empathy learning in their own environment. It is a work in progress. 1. Treat empathy as a skill. a. Experience empathy, don't intellectualize it. “It has to be about construction, not simply instruction,” says Mary Gordon. Mary’s Roots of Empathy program is founded on the idea that children cannot simply be told about behaviors like kindness and sharing; they must meaningfully experience it. b. Practice it. For Eric Dawson, founder of Peace First, peace-building is not simply the absence of violence; it is a skill in itself. Through an hour-long course each week, students learn peace-building just as they would any other subject, beginning in elementary school and going all the way through high school. c. Measure your impact. Peace First, Playworks, Roots of Empathy, and many other successful programs connect schools’ “pain points” to building empathy, through clear metrics that draw a direct line between students’ involvement and reduced disciplinary referrals, reduced bullying and conflict, increased retention, and improved academic outcomes. 2. Remove “otherness.” a. Reverse role dynamics. Andreas Heinecke’s Dialogue in the Dark thrusts visitors into complete darkness. Blind guides lead them through a series of experiences in which they learn to trust their other senses and collaborate with
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one another, leaving with new perspectives and a changed understanding of what it means to be “differently abled.” In Christa Gannon’s FLY program, police and probation officers switch roles with incarcerated youth in a “mock trial,” with a dramatic impact on both parties. b. Link personal immersion to professional skill-building. First-year students at Edgar Cahn’s Antioch School of Law are required to complete a six week homestay with a client family in order to understand a client’s underlying motivations, and to instill a recognition that “there are more important things than exams and class standing.” c. Link “other” awareness to self-awareness. Molly Barker’s Girls on the Run begins with an exercise called “Getting to Know Each Other.” Eyes closed, the girls are asked to picture the top of their head and to imagine a plug. Attached to this plug is a cord, extending through their brain, their heart, and on down to their toes. It’s a gross cord, filled with grime and gunk. And the message of this cord is “you’re not smart enough, you’re not pretty enough, you’re not good at math or science.” The coach asks how a girl would feel when plugged into that cord, and together, they reflect on how that plug feels for them personally. On the count of three, they pop out that cord and replace it with a Girls on the Run cord, one that glitters and glows and says, “you are good enough.” They then reflect on what would happen if the girl were plugged into that cord, and “all the sudden, they get it,” explains Molly. 3. Prioritize story-telling. a. Unlock motivations through personal stories. For Dorothy Stoneman’s YouthBuild USA, building a sense of common purpose amongst participants is critical to getting the job done and sustaining students’ motivation. On their first day together, they begin by sharing their life stories, a process that forces them to look beyond their initial assumptions and stereotypes, and to understand both their personal motivations and those of others. b. Focus on emotional comprehension, not just content. When reading and reflecting on a story in class or at home, teachers and parents often focus on the events, rather than characters’ feelings and motivations. Rather than focus on listening comprehension, experts in empathic learning suggest a focus instead on emotional comprehension, helping students to reflect on both why a particular event occurred and its consequences. 4. Play. a. Make play the cornerstone of the school day. Numerous Fellows have demonstrated why play matters – not simply as a means of improving health and expending energy, but as a critical learning tool in itself and an essential experience to developing empathy. Through play, kids learn the value of
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cooperation and how to work effectively in teams. They learn to resolve conflict, and to explore imagined worlds and experiences. And they perform better in class. Jill Vialet's Playworks works with low-income schools to foster a positive learning environment through play. Trained coaches use recess, in-class exercises, extracurricular programming, and interscholastic sports leagues to teach games, fair play, positive conflict resolution, and leadership development. The result? In the 2009-10 school year, 88% of 1,900 teachers and administrators polled in Playworks schools reported a decrease in the number of disciplinary referrals, and 86% reported a decrease in the incidents of bullying during recess. b. Make play a part of the community. In founding KaBOOM!, Darell Hammond set out to correct what he calls the Play Deficit by teaming up with communities to build kid-inspired playspaces, and sharing that knowledge far and wide with other civic organizations, parent and community groups, and individuals looking to improve or build their own. 5. Create a transparent, fair and trust-based learning environment. a. Make vulnerability a learning asset. When the government took away a quarter of their $4 million budget, staff at Sharon Terry’s Genetic Alliance pledged to uphold a culture of transparency. Rather than debate over who to let go behind closed doors, the senior management called a meeting for the entire staff. They were upfront in saying, “We are totally going to suck at this. We have no idea how to navigate these hard waters…and we’re going to mess up left and right.” To which the staff replied, “We’re going to help you through it.” b. Respond to the person, not just the performance. Empathy is, to a large extent, about understanding the person behind the performance, recognizing the underlying motivations behind particular behaviors, picking up non-verbal cues, and looking at a situation through another’s eyes. It’s hardly a secret that kids who are acting up are often facing other challenges. The FLY program is reducing recidivism rates by getting players in the juvenile justice system to listen to young people rather than just punish their behavior. c. Ritualize the sharing of responsibility. Sharon Terry and the Genetic Alliance have found that the best way to resolve tension and conflict is through what they call “identification.” Whether dealing with a team project or negotiating with partners, they consciously reframe their frustration and complaints in terms of their own contribution to the problem, rather than project blame on others. Rather than say, ‘you’re being an obstacle,’ staff flip it to say, ‘how is it true that I’m being an obstacle?’ Both sides thus become partners in solving the problem. d. Establish a structure for fair play. Children participate when they believe things are fair. Kids are far more likely to practice conflict resolution and cooperation when they have a familiar set of practices where the rules are clear.
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To that end, Playworks establishes a clear structure for play and then relies on rock, paper, scissors to resolve disagreements, training kids to do so automatically when issues arise. 6. Model empathy. a. Embed empathy into the learning environment. Empathy cannot be learned in isolation; it must be modeled by teacher, principal, and staff behavior. Building off of John Dewey’s concept of the concurrent, invisible curriculum, Eric Dawson’s Peace First aims to establish a school culture that explicitly champions kindness and compassion through rituals and behavior norms. Empathy can be embedded into everything from how a building is designed, to the way adults relate to one another, and how kids are greeted at the door. 7. Link empathy to impact. a. Align professional development with applied empathy. The question is not simply “how do you develop empathy?” says Bernard Amadei, but rather “once you’ve developed the skill of empathy, what do you do with it?” Engineers Without Borders enables engineering students to put their skills to use to help meet the needs of developing communities. Students work hand-in-hand with local communities to identify a clear need, and to develop a long-term sustainability plan. Having worked hand in hand with the communities they are serving, students return with a deeper appreciation of local knowledge, a commitment to applying their skills for social good, and a deeper understanding of development as a two-way street. b. Cultivate collaboration as essential to personal and community development. YouthBuild USA brings together young people from low-income backgrounds to build affordable housing units, learning job skills and earning a high school diploma or GED as they go. In the process, they develop as life-long leaders, attaining a new sense of their role in society. 8. Incentivize empathic action. a. Capture “psychic income.” In designing an alternative currency system that would reward neighborly acts of kindness and volunteerism, Edgar Cahn wondered if the new system would be of use only for those at the bottom of the economic ladder, who lacked any other form of currency. But he found that there are two kinds of benefit: one based on exchange, and one based on intrinsic value and the sense that you’re contributing to something bigger than yourself. Time Banks captures both, allowing users to exchange one hour of services given for one hour of services received. As a result of this psychic benefit, since Time Banks’ inception, the supply of volunteers and people wanting to offer time has always exceeded demand.
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b. Cultivate peer recognition. At the end of each day, participants in Fresh Lifelines for Youth’s Leadership Training Institute close with an exercise called, “Caught You Being Cool.” Participants write each other notes, noting moments during the day in which they noticed them doing something nice for someone else or the entire group.
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APPENDIX Bernard Amadei, Engineers Without Borders-USA Year of Ashoka election: 2010 | www.ewb-usa.org Bernard is challenging the single-minded focus on science and mechanics often found among engineering students, in order to channel their skills toward poverty alleviation and global development, and away from charity models and inappropriate solutions. Molly Barker, Girls on the Run Year of Ashoka election: 2008 | www.girlsontherun.org Girls on the Run is a life-changing, experiential learning programs for girls ages eight to thirteen. The programs combine training for a 3.1 mile running event with self-esteem enhancing, uplifting workouts. The goals of the programs are to encourage positive emotional, social, mental, spiritual and physical development. Edgar Cahn, Time Banks Year of Ashoka election: 2008 | www.timebanks.org At its most basic level, Time banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the Time Bank as a Time Dollar. Then you have a Time dollar to spend on having someone doing something for you. Eric Dawson Peace First Year of Ashoka election: 2007 | www.peacefirst.org Peace First (formerly Peace Games) began as a response to the sky-rocketing youth homicide rates in the early 1990s, as an approach to look at children as problem-solvers, rather than witnesses, or victims of their surroundings. They work with Pre-K-8 schools to build safe, effective school climates where children learn how to be engaged and active citizens, resulting in a 60 percent reduction in violence in the schools where they work, and a 70-80 percent increase in instances of children breaking up fights. Christa Gannon, Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) Year of Ashoka election: 2010 | www.flyprogram.org Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) helps teens in trouble learn to make healthy decisions. The organization provides at-risk and disadvantaged youth with vital information regarding the decisions they make in their lives, and well-trained mentors who listen. Graduates have the opportunity to advance to a leadership program where they use their knowledge and skills to give back to their communities. Mary Gordon, Roots of Empathy Year of Ashoka election: 2002 | www.rootsofempathy.org Roots of Empathy is an innovative, classroom-based program that reduces childhood levels of aggression by counteracting the physical, psychological, and neurological effects of parental violence and neglect. Roots of Empathy makes emotional literacy–the ability to recognize and understand each other’s emotions–a core school subject. It brings a living example of the loving relationship between parent and child into the classroom. Targeted to children's varying levels of emotional development, Roots of Empathy provides young people with strategies to
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effectively recognize and respond to the emotions of others. Andreas Heinecke, Dialogue in the Dark Year of Ashoka election: 2005 | www.dialogue-in-the-dark.com The idea is simple: In complete darkness, blind individuals lead small groups of guests through a series of ordinary situations that are suddenly experienced extraordinarily, without eyesight. Role reversal takes place as sighted people lose familiar routines while blind people facilitate mobility and confidence, becoming ambassadors of a culture devoid of images. Everyone shares an unforgettable experience. Visitors report enhanced perception and communication, a greater sense of empathy and solidarity, gratitude for their senses, and respect for those who see the world differently. Sharon Terry, Genetic Alliance Year of Ashoka election: 2010 | www.geneticalliance.org Genetic Alliance is the world’s leading nonprofit health advocacy organization committed to transforming health through genetics and promoting an environment of openness centered on the health of individuals, families, and communities. Jill Vialet, Playworks Year of Ashoka election: 2004 | www.playworks.org Playworks is a comprehensive program to create safe and inclusive environments for play and physical activity both within and beyond the school day, driving significant progress in both physical health and academic achievement.
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