Last week Empathy Action were invited to Blundell’s School in Tiverton to provide a day-long programme of activities for the school’s year 9 students as part of their Poverty Awareness Day.
The session kicked off with a presentation of the film, The Good Lie starring Reese Witherspoon and was followed later in the day by Empathy Action’s ‘Poverty Trap’ simulation.
The Good Lie follows the journey of a group of Sudanese boys, orphaned by the civil war in their home country, as they battle terrible odds to make the danger-ridden journey to Kenya, thousands of miles away. After spending more than a decade in a refugee camp, four of the survivors are chosen by lottery to be relocated to the United States. The film then charts their attempts to adapt to a country and culture completely alien to them. For the year 9 students, watching the film was a way of getting them to think beyond the boundaries of their own lives. Coupled with Empathy Action’s immersive experience, the children were challenged to see that poverty and injustice can easily enslave but that there is still hope in situations such as these.
The Good Lie ends with an African proverb, ‘If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together’. At Empathy Action our vision is to see an end to poverty, brought about by concerted, compassionate, community action. Our simulations are not just about educating or raising awareness but about asking participants, ‘how can we work together to defeat poverty?’
We hope that students at Blundell’s School were inspired to get involved in using their resources and talents to battle global deprivation and we’re very thankful to have been invited back already!