Empathy Action

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Luxury Brands Help Fight Poverty

Heart equationThis week the prestigious Lingfield Park Racecourse hosted an evening of networking arranged by a number of luxury brands. They included the world’s most expensive perfume maker, the people that manufacture James Bond’s famous car and an award winning wedding dress designer. Team members Ben and Sandy were there to see how the event’s organisers were using Empathy Action’s fairly traded soapstone hearts to buy 270 hot meals for people in the slums of Kenya.

The value of a heart

Amidst the glamour of dinner jackets, dresses and DB-9s were our hand made stone sculptures, positioned by every place setting. They had been bought as gifts for the guests but their effect on people in Kenya has an more significant impact. For each heart sold, three hot meals are bought for a child living in Kibera slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. The aim is to combat malnutrition and support education in Africa.

One 10 year old from the feeding programme says:

“ I come to the centre on Saturday for feeding and on Monday for therapy. The best thing about Saturday is that I play… I would like to tell the [people] in the UK ‘thank you’, you are doing a great thing.”

Give your event a fairly traded flavour

Using gifts like these at a corporate gathering, wedding, party or any other kind of event, is a great way to say ‘thanks for coming’ to your guests. However, the greater value comes from the difference they make in the lives of those who most need our help.

If you are interested in sourcing beautiful, bespoke products that make fantastic presents and enrich the lives of marginalised communities, then please contact us today.

A Mile in my Shoes

3 men outside the mile in my shoes exhibitionAs part of the recent Totally Thames festival, Empathy Action Director Ben Solanky reflects on his experience of the ‘A Mile in My Shoes’ exhibition.

The other month I stepped into a giant shoebox on London’s South Bank.

Inside was a huge collection of shoes, each with its own story. The idea: you walk in, remove your shoes and put on those of a stranger who lives within a small radius of where you are standing. You are then given a pair of earphones and have the chance to listen to a snippet from the owner’s life.

We hit play and walked.

It was fiddly walking around in the waders I must admit. I soon forgot the ambient noises around me as I focused on the voice in my ears and gazed out on the beautiful river Thames, a lifeline for the city that I too often take for granted. I learn about the history of the man whose shoes I am wearing; about how he loves the way that his job as a crayfish catcher gives him a totally unique perspective on the river and the city it courses through. Every adjective he uses testifies to the passion he feels and I was quickly absorbed.

For a brief moment these creative and imaginative empathy steps transported me into a world of strangers and their lives, one in which I saw familiar surroundings in a whole new light.

For more about the Empathy Museum’s immersive style and outlook of founder Roman Krznaric’s, check out his fascinating RSA talk on ‘The Power of Outrospection’. Why not also get in touch with us about stepping into or hosting one of our own immersive simulations.

Living On One Dollar

A 2013 documentary, Living On One Dollar, explores the challenges of living below the poverty line in rural Guatemala as four American students take on the task of surviving on $1 USD per day.

Life in the Community

The students move into a small dwelling in the village of Peña Blanca where they sleep side-by-side on a hard floor. They set themselves certain parameters for their mission to make life for them as similar to that of their neighbours. For example, rather than simply spend one dollar per day, they pick out a random amount of money each day, between 0 and 9 dollars, to simulate the instability of income that many of the world’s poorest face.

one-dollarThe boys grapple with challenges like their inability to afford basic medication, lack of knowledge about how to grow food, low energy due to their drop in calorie intake etc. But they also meet some wonderful characters, people who are poor financially but rich in generosity and kindness. They learn about the hopes and aspirations of some of these people and about some have benefitted greatly from micro finance loans, enabling them to take the initiative and kick-start their own businesses.

Playing Your Part

The documentary would be particularly interesting for anyone with experience of Empathy Action’s ‘Poverty Trap’ simulation. It looks at the big changes that small actions can cause and challenges the viewer to play their part in battling poverty.

The film also demonstrates the difference in empathy that closeness to the situation creates. For instance, one of the non-Spanish speaking members of the group who hasn’t been hearing the stories of the locals they live among says at one point, ‘this is not that hard… I could do this for another 2 years’. Reflecting back on this, filmmaker Zach, who does speak Spanish, tells us,

I just got really angry… clearly the people we were around, they had learned to survive but it wasn’t ok and it wasn’t easy for them… they couldn’t follow their dreams because they couldn’t go to school because they had to provide for their family.

Not many of us will ever experience such extreme poverty but that doesn’t mean we can’t take steps to understand it better, empathise with those who live with it and join in the battle to end it. Talk to us about how you can involve your school, business or community group in the action.

Living On One Dollar can be bought on DVD or is currently available on Netflix in the UK.

 

The Good Lie

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 LieThe 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!