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Becoming Anti-Racist

WhatsApp Image 2021-01-29 at 11.49.44Following the events of last year, many people were saying: 

“Being not racist isn’t enough”.

Including schools.  

In late October, the Assistant Headteacher of Four Elms Primary School reached out to us to talk about the school’s Anti-Racist initiative. The school wanted to talk about racism and the attitudes faced by refugees in our country.

They wanted to discuss the effects of prejudice, and how it can be challenged and changed.

By working together and choosing to use empathy,  we were able to deepen and expand the conversation they had begun. Our handicrafts – specifically the friendship bracelet crafted by displaced Syrian women – helped the school community to focus on raising awareness of issues facing people of colour, and refugees. In addition, the school also raised enough funds to help a family in Jordan displaced by the Syrian conflict. Their collective efforts culminated in a powerful and thought-provoking video in which Year 6 children shared work inspired by the initiative – pictures and poems etc, to their families and friends and wider school community. It was a privilege to help them in their ongoing efforts to become the anti-racists that our world needs. 

And Four Elms Primary School helped us, as we adapted and became more creative in delivering Empathy Action 2.0.

 It starts with a conversation…

 We’d love to use our expertise and creativity to help you, your school or workplace with your ideas and conversations. We have a wealth of resources –  handicrafts, stories, micro-exercises, fundraisers – and a wellspring of ideas. We can help you curate your own empathy experiments and work with you (virtually at the moment, hopefully in person soon!) to deliver these programmes. Please do contact us for more information.

Further ideas:

Festivals using Refugee made bracelets for the entrance wristband.

Parents sponsor Refugee Made Bracelets for their big summer event.

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Festival bracelets for made by displaced Syrian Women for Livestock 2016

Festival bracelets for made by displaced Syrian Women for Livestock 2016

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #antiracist, #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, compassion, EmpathyAction2.0

Incite or Inspire?

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The new year continues apace. It is cold, it is dark, and the news swings from sobering to hopeful and straight back again. The new coronavirus variant is – as we all know – virulent. Our front line workers are fighting for all of our lives, and key workers are doing their utmost to ensure that everything – education, food supplies, waste management, etc. runs as near to normal as can be. The rest of us must stay at home, away from family and friends, to keep us all safe.

We don’t know yet for how long.

A year on from the beginning of this pandemic, we are being set a much tougher test. Hospitals are at peak capacity as the new variant – B.1.1.7. – reaches every corner of the world. A race between the vaccine and the virus is picking up pace, and we are tired.

The narrative is far from clear.

When we last faced this level of uncertainty, it was Spring, with blossom, sunshine, and the promise of better things to come.

This time, what is the story? Where is the hope?

In our fast-changing world of extremes, and amid all the loud headlines, when everything feels overwhelming, it is difficult to hold on to a narrative of hope. Saying ‘We can do this,’ can feel like another pressure.

Our words are powerful.

Being a citizen in a world where words contain so much power, we can choose words to incite anger and criticism, to vent our fears or project those fears onto others. Sometimes it feels too easy to quickly apportion blame and offer our critique. It even feels like an act of courage to choose words that show compassion and understanding, that inspire, and that can lift one another up.

Incite or inspire?

During Lockdown #1 we found it powerful to learn how to listen and actively choose to do so. Last week, the words of a five year old were the ones that inspired us. These hopeful words are all around us; we can choose to hear them and share them. Like choosing empathy, we can choose inspiration!

Send us your stories

We’d love to hear the words you have found helpful and inspirational over this last week. Thank you.

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Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #choosehope, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #radicalkindness, #ShareHumanity

Hope is Offensive

At the start of this new year, one of our founders, Ben Solanky, reflects on a week where the world has once again changed and challenged.

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People can be angry, Papa but they can still be friends”

The voluntary words offered by a 5 year old when he overhears his father talk about the angry protestors who mobbed and entered Capitol Hill building this week.

Too simple? Too naive?

What challenges me is that I find the hope in these innocent words offends me and my instinctive reaction is to belittle it. 

My response is to dismiss this idea. To guard myself against it. To build a barrier. A wall around my heart. Instead I judge my child as ‘sweet’ and ‘innocent’. It seems that it is me who is quick to judge rather than entertain such an offensive idea like friendship to solve our worldly problem of hatred.

And I ask myself why this is.

Is it because, like so many others, I feel that:

  • ‘We’ve been here before… and here we go again’
    Somehow the repetitive nature of this hope highlights the gritty reality we are facing. Revisiting hope seems offensive.

 

  • ‘I used to believe that but…”
    Somewhere along the line experience has aided us in building a great big wall to keep hope at bay. We know it’s there, but it’s just hard to get to. The result is to back off, to not engage. Realism makes hope offensive. 

 

  • ‘It’s too painful to allow ourselves to believe this’
    Somehow we’ve been too close to hope before and had our hopes extinguished. This has hurt us. Really hurt us. Hurt makes hope offensive.

 

  • ‘Why is it nice? Why is it innocent? Isn’t it just utterly offensive?’
    How can the thought of being friends with your enemies or those you hate be a ‘nice’ thing? Hope is not nice. It’s painful. It’s hard. It’s challenging and sometimes demands a sacrifice from us. Making hope just nice is offensive (and untrue).

In an age where hatred is being tweeted and taught, we also hear that there is another way. To teach love. To be courageous enough to champion difference and to choose the difficult path of empathy. To the extent of finding empathy with and compassion for your enemies.

That’s offensive. That’s radical. 

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We do not claim to have any answers to a pandemic of hatred but we do hold that teaching empathy and building compassionate people is part of building a peaceful world. We can learn to be friends with one another rather than continuing to fight.

As one of our team said: ‘It’s out of the mouths of babes and children’ that we see a future world that they can thrive in. And as for my son, he reminds me that having the courage to try to see hope is important not just for me, but for all of us. 

 

No one is born hating another person … People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela 

Empathy Action is currently looking to increase its empathy programmes. From using our handicrafts to activities and exercises to help students, colleagues, or family members, we have a number of resources we can share. Get in touch if you would like to know more. 

 

Please see below for more resources sharing a message of radical hope.

  • The story of friendship between CP Ellis and Anne Atwater (Also dramatised in the film: “Best of Enemies“)
  • Accidental Courtesy documentary of the story of Daryl Davis (also see Daryl’s TED talk “Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies.“)
  • Friendship from Syria bracelet from Empathy Action’s ethical gift range and use for the basis of programme in your workplace, school or event

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Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #radicalkindness, #ShareHumanity

Meet the Makers: The Street Children of Harare

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[This post is a difficult one to read. It contains references to violence, drug use and abuse. It is also the harsh reality for the young people living on the streets in Harare.  Annie Makoni, of One Hope Church, whose words form the foundation of this article, did not sugar coat the situation in which these children are living. It is uncomfortable; it is incredibly challenging. After much discussion, we felt it was too important not to tell the full story behind some of the products we sell. Please do read. Thank you so much to Annie for sharing this powerful, difficult narrative. ] 

Today we are taking you to the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, to meet the young people who live there, and who make the beautiful beaded keyrings that we sell.

The story is not an easy one – you will hear of hardship and loss, and vulnerability and loneliness. But throughout it, there is determination and hope, and the children’s sheer will to survive.

Annie Makoni, together with her team from One Hope Church, has worked with the street children for several years. She paints a candid picture of how the kids live, and how hard it is to rescue and rehabilitate them.

There are no quick fixes. It’s loads of fun, hard work, needs heaps of energy and patience. We meet some absolutely unforgettable, brilliant, funny, vibrant characters, who make us laugh and laugh. We also often feel the huge burden of pain and hopelessness of those who feel rejected and beaten down whose stories make you wake up in the night and cry. It’s a long and painful story for anyone to reform. But we keep going as this is not yet the end of the story.”

The story begins with the need to survive. 

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Nine out of ten times [children end up on the streets due to] abuse from a step-parent.”

Annie goes on to explain,

“Shona people traditionally believe that if they take someone into their home who is not of the same ancestors as them, it will cause them bad luck. Many stepmothers refuse to nurture the children of their husband’s former marriage, depriving them, not only of love but of basic necessities such as food, clothing, education, etc.” 

Zimbabwe also has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, and despite ARV treatment being widely available, many people with HIV do not want tests (there is still a stigma attached to the disease). As a consequence, people succumb to common diseases such as TB and malaria because their immune systems are compromised. This results in a large number of orphaned children, who leave home either because they are unwanted or abused by relatives, or they have to find work to support their younger siblings. 

Poverty is another big driving force. Even if young people do have caring parents or other relatives at home, they often lack the opportunities to attend school or find work, and they believe that the city will give them a better life.

Sadly for many, they find, on arriving in the city, that the streets are not paved with gold and that there are thousands of others like themselves, trying to find work.”

On the street, life continues to be a struggle to survive.

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“To survive a child needs to join some kind of gang. The gangs have ‘bases’ where they sleep and hang out, and children base themselves as near as they can to some source of food or money-making opportunity. Many gangs hide out behind supermarkets in the alleyways where the rubbish bins are, and where food is thrown out. They wait for the moment each day when rotten food or food which is no longer sellable, is thrown out and then they pick through it, putting anything edible into dirty cardboard boxes for them to share afterwards.” 

Within their gangs, the children have various ways of making money: begging at traffic lights; forming mini businesses (like washing cars); and committing petty crimes, like stealing handbags and breaking into cars.

Money is likely to be stolen by someone else as soon as it is gained – younger and weaker children are, of course, the most vulnerable.

So it is important to spend it as quickly as possible. 

Food is a priority, but drugs are often even higher up the list. Generally, our street kids are not on hard sophisticated drugs like cocaine, but they can get wasted pretty quickly and effectively just by visiting the shoe man. Almost every shoe mender in downtown Harare has a little queue of kids lining up to buy shoe glue.” 

Once the glue is bought, the children “slump down anywhere”, put their small plastic containers over their mouths and inhale, “breathing in deeply as if it were life-saving oxygen.” The whites of their eyes turn yellow, and they fall unconscious. 

“They are oblivious to the cars narrowly missing their heads as they loll over the pavement onto the road, or to the people stepping over them as if they are no more than an inconvenient piece of rubbish.”

Kids also get high on “broncho” – a cough mixture with high levels of codeine, sold on the street, and “sombodia” – a drink which is a mixture of fertilizers and paint thinners.

Nights are generally not for sleeping, especially during the winter due to the cold. Many kids stay awake so they can escape other gangs who want to beat them up, and to avoid any other trouble. They make small fires from plastic bottles and old tyres and huddle together in the alleyways and back streets. Sometimes the whole night is spent on the move. By day, the children sleep in parks and on pavements.

Soon, caught up in a gang and addicted to harmful substances, [the kids] begin to forget why they originally came to the streets and just focus on getting through the next day.”

Every day is a series of challenges to survive

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Violence, fire and the seasons

“With so many street people “high” on something, fights can erupt at any time. I have seen a young boy almost strangled by a bully in his gang just for a packet of glue, and a few years back we lost a teenager named Innocent. He was stoned to death in a fight, also over the glue. One boy was set on fire by another lad who had a grudge against him. He was in hospital for over two months and will always bear the scars.”  Annie tells us.

Winter is especially tough. Recently, a mentally disturbed boy who was high on drugs rolled into a fire whilst asleep. He woke up almost too late, and suffered terrible burns.

Annie continues, “Amazingly, thanks to the constant care of him by Victor and Tendai, whilst he was in the hospital, he made a good recovery. Again, he will always bear the scars.”

During the hot rainy season (October to March) drains and alleyways become flooded, and raw sewage often runs through where the children sleep, which makes them vulnerable to diseases like cholera and typhoid. Skin complaints are also a problem.

It is also “not uncommon for children to be swept away and drowned in the storm drains where they crawl in to sleep.”

Sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies

“Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant amongst those in the street. Usually, there are a handful of girls in each gang and they are passed around between the boys. Many become pregnant whilst they are still children themselves. There is also a lot of abuse where older boys are forcing younger boys into sex. The shame and embarrassment means that it is often only when diseases are far gone that they have the courage to ask for help.”

For babies born on the street, there is little chance of escape, and they are often seen as assets, and not only by their mothers. Babies are passed around the street kids – they know that if they go begging with a baby on their backs, people will give more generously. Toddlers are similarly used. They are left in the middle of busy roads to beg and money is collected from the child by an older street person, who is watching and waiting nearby.

Helping through trust and friendship – and patience.

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Living on the streets causes complex problems. One Hope is able to offer two kinds of help. 

One is immediate relief: food, clothes, and medical help … which often builds the initial bridge into a child’s life. The other is a much longer route which takes a great deal of tenacity and perseverance, involving getting to the root causes of what has brought a person into the street and trying to help them to find a way off the streets … This might be through reunification with family, education, or through learning income-generating skills. All of this requires the giving of time and patience to really get to know and gain the trust of an individual young person.”

There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done so that an individual’s needs can be met. Members of One Hope visit the kids in their bases, organise regular outings and football matches, and let them know that the church is a safe place for them. The street kids like to hang out there, freshen up with a shower, and they can also have a meal every lunchtime – they are involved in the cooking as much as possible.

The route off the streets. 

Being reunited with family is always first prize and sometimes it just needs one of our team to accompany them back to their rural homes and sit down with the relatives. Sometimes the reason for running away from home is that they have stolen something in their neighborhood. Having an adult to help them approach those they have wronged and ask forgiveness, often opens the way for a new start. However, where there has been abuse at home, reunification can be a lot more complicated and dangerous for the child. Sadly some families are too disintegrated or abusive to be a safe option. Where poverty has been the cause of a child coming to the street, we have to look at how we can support the family so that the same poverty trap doesn’t just repeat itself. Many rural families have a small plot of land and often providing seeds and tools can be a good way of ensuring that they will be able to survive.”

The gift of the beaded keyrings. 

Providing opportunities for learning income-generating skills is a really important part of our work.”

Young boys are invited to “have a go” at bead and wire work, and if they enjoy it and show a flair, they are invited to join the production team.

Annie says that the making of them is extremely therapeutic. The young boys/men “relax and chat and laugh as well as grow in self-esteem as they realise that they can make something beautiful which others appreciate. Once they are able to make something of good enough quality to sell, we are able to pay them for what they have made. This gives them an opportunity, to find a cheap room to rent which is a first step away from the streets.“

8554d41c-7c12-4068-9daa-dcd6370327edOngoing Challenges

Some of the kids have been on the streets for so long, they are adept at surviving on nothing, and they don’t want to leave the familiarity or freedom of ‘home’. Their gangs and bases give them a sense of belonging and identity in the absence of family.

 Plus they are always on the move. Annie explains,

They change bases, even cities, on a regular basis, especially if they have committed a crime in a certain area, they will suddenly move to another area. [They are often arrested and put on trial for crimes, especially theft.] For these reasons, it’s really hard sometimes to maintain continuity when you are trying to help an individual see through a certain course of action. They can come faithfully to a project or course we are running for a few weeks and then vanish in a cloud of smoke, just when you were beginning to feel that they were making progress.”

When COVID-19 hit the streets in March, many of the young were sent to various institutions. They were treated well but had nothing to do. Before long, they were selling their blankets in exchange for drugs, and spent the winter months suffering from the cold. Many escaped back to the streets, and increasing numbers returned to One Hope, where meals were being cooked every day. Since October, work has been resumed on the ground.

We have temporarily lost many of our regular faces as they have been scattered to different places. It is a time of trying to regroup and re-build the bridges of friendship and trust.”

Hope:  Matthew and Time

Annie says, “Both Mathew and Time (of One Hope) used to be full-time street people. I first met Mathew as a teenager. He was climbing out of a drain onto the street and I invited him to a camp we were having. He and his gang were on their way to get wasted in the Park with a bottle of sombodia. He lived by breaking into cars and stealing radios and mugging people on the streets. Fifteen years on, he is one of the gentlest, most compassionate people I have had the chance to work with. He and Time really understand what it is like to have to kick addictions, turn your life over to Jesus and be brave enough to go back and try to restore relationships at home.” 

It is a long journey, and a young person may return to the streets many times before permanently staying away. And the longer a child has been on the streets, the longer it can take to adjust to life off them.

But One Hope remains a constant:

We hope to be a loving presence in [the children’s] lives so that when they are ready to be helped off the street, they know where to return.”

The hope – and belief – is that there will always be new successes, like Mathew. He is now in charge of the recruitment of the kids who make the beaded keyrings, and who take such great pride in their work.

As Annie says:

It’s a long and painful story for anyone to reform. But we keep going as this is not yet the end of the story.”

[Thank you for reading this article. We know it’s a difficult one. But, together, we can help ensure that this is not the end of the story for the street children. 

Click here to send one of the boys’ beautiful hand made products to someone special; someone who has shown you friendship and love this year. In doing so, you will also help to keep the street children and their stories alive.]

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #ForYouBecause

Meet the Makers: Florence, Lorna and Mary

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Meet the women who hand sew the colourful juggling balls we sell. Our friends at Pursue Kenya run a programme that enables them to meet weekly. Based in the village of Shirotso in Western Kenya, they make the balls from scraps of fabric (Kitenge) donated by local tailors and filled with a local lentil called ndengu.

But it’s not just about what they make. 

Each of the women who attends the workshops is a widow. The workshops allow them to discover new skills, forge new friendships, gossip and have fun. Leanne Coggan of Pursue Kenya explains:

Before any of the widows became involved…the majority of them had been ostracised by their communities and were isolated and very low in mood. Many of them had not had someone visit them for years, and felt unloved and worthless, and that their lives lacked purpose or hope.”

Leanne works closely with Florence, Lorna and Mary – she says they are some of her favourite people – and explains that this group of just three craft the juggling balls. The group was originally larger, but health issues have had an impact.

All the widows live below the poverty line and subsistence farming is a way of life for the women.  Each day they work their land, tend to livestock, and fetch water and firewood. In addition, they all care for several grandchildren whose parents have left rural life for cities in search of jobs. These extra responsibilities of feeding, educating and meeting their grandchildren’s medical needs are hard to bear. Especially as – being widows who have not brought sons to their families – they occupy the lowest social status in their communities.

These are some of the things the widows have said since joining the workshops:

I had not been hugged for so long. My first hug from Ceciliah (of Pursue Kenya) woke up something in me and now I get hugs all the time!“

People in the community like me because they see I must matter to be visited by white people! I am not lonely and I am so happy because I know I am loved and have friends.“

My life has a purpose now, everything has changed, yesterday I was nobody, today I am a big someone and everyone knows it!“

Mary is the youngest of the three widows. When her husband died, she was blamed for his death and shunned by family and friends. At her lowest point, she considered suicide. But Leanne says that, since being able to generate an income through the sale of the juggling balls, Mary hasn’t stopped smiling and (up until the pandemic) always had a house full of friends. She has been appointed the role of secretary for the wider Pursue group and when asked recently how she felt about Pursue Kenya, she said:

It has given me back my life but even more than it was!“

The impact of Covid-19

Leanne explains that their struggle for food has been heightened. The local market places – where the women both sell and buy food –  have been closed. In addition, several of them rely on money sent back from a relative working in the city. The loss of jobs has meant that this money is no longer being received. And the women’s grandchildren are currently receiving no education at all as schools are closed until at least January.

Nor are the widows able to meet up as usual or get their hugs – but they know this will not be forever, and that their lives have already changed for the better.

e89d5505-3a33-4312-9754-79ce45ee6f15What better way to start helping others than by learning to juggle this Christmas. Thank you for helping to support these wonderful women, especially in such challenging times. To see the amazing juggling balls, please visit our shop.

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Every one of our ethical gifts is made by people whose lives are improved with the purchases you make: they gain an income and a purpose, and they are given the opportunity to come together with others and contribute to their communities in a meaningful way. 

 

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: #chooseempathy, #empathyaction, #EmpathyActionStories, #ForYouBecause, #meetthemakers, #radicalkindness, #ShareHumanity

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Latest

Becoming Anti-Racist

Becoming Anti-Racist

Following the events of last year, many people were saying:  “Being … >>

Incite or Inspire?

Incite or Inspire?

The new year continues apace. It is cold, it is dark, and the news … >>

Hope is Offensive

Hope is Offensive

At the start of this new year, one of our founders, Ben Solanky, … >>

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