Come Read with Me on Empathy Day

Empathy Lab UK along with authors, libraries, Patron of Reading, Society of Authors and other like-minded people is launching Empathy Day on 13th June. This is the first such celebration and the hope is to continue to celebrate empathy and promote mutual understanding in communities and schools across the year.

As a daughter, sister, aunt, and friend, I believe empathy starts early and starts at home. How we treat our families on good days and bad days, how we like to be treated when we are down and when we are raring to go is as important as scoring high grades, making money or even winning Gold Medals in competitions.

But how do we build empathy amongst young people? How do we ensure the next generation has a reserve of empathy and shared experiences to tap into? Books are a wonderful way to learn about others, or what we perceive as otherness. We’re often afraid and wary of new and unfamiliar things. By getting to know others – they perhaps are no longer strange to us and hence no longer other.

Who are these others? Where do they live? Why should we care?

In a society like ours, where many politicians are asking us to be afraid of others, defining the other is important. What is this other-ness? Is it a different religion, language or the way we dress? Whether we follow the same religion or not, whether we speak the same language or not, do we all not laugh and cry at similar things? Do we all not want happiness, love, friendships, an ice-cream on a hot day and cute cat pictures on social media?

To celebrate the first Empathy Day, authors are visiting schools and reading books that teach us empathy and to walk in the shoes of others. You can recommend a book, a song, a movie that to you represents empathy, that would show the reader / listener/ viewer what it is to understand the world from another viewpoint. Do you have activities, poems and songs to share? Tell us on twitter with #ReadforEmpathy hashtag.

Want to know more and the science behind Empathy? Check out these resources.

And don’t forget – visit the Empathy Day website on 13th June to get hold of the Read for Empathy Guide.

And to end I want to share this video that was useful to me to understand empathy – do watch if you have a few minutes.