volunteering - Empathy Action

Empathy in a Time of Crisis – 6

Team Empathy Journal – Part 6

Continuing our blog about this time of global crisis from the perspective of a voluntary team, taking each day as it comes. Thank you for reading.

As we all navigate these unprecedented times, we know it is the small things that make a difference to our week – the acts of kindness, the rainbows hanging in the windows as we walk by, the glimpse of familiar and beloved faces on Facetime and Zoom. Each of us has our own unique way of managing our days. This week, we thought we would take the opportunity to ask one of our brilliant volunteers, Janet, to share how she has been managing these last six weeks.

1. Where are you spending your lockdown?

At home with my husband of 38 years!

2. What is helping you navigate these difficult and unprecedented times?

Being with Hubby!

Lectio365 – Bible and prayer to start each day.

Spring awakening, birdsong,

Walking, gardening, keeping in touch with folks.

Managing anxiety by being careful not to OD on news, turning off technology, and escaping to National Theatre Live, Andrew Lloyd Webber The Show Must Go On and on Netflix, Ann with an E! Oh and cooking!!

3. Have there been highlights?

The weather, and the light on the spring flowers,

Lack of noise from Gatwick!

4. What has surprised you most?

How tired I’ve been and how long it’s taken to do things.

5. What are you most looking forward to when this time has passed?

* Seeing our sons and especially our new granddaughter.

* Other family and friends.

* Visiting National Trust gardens, art galleries and the beach.

* Driving through Europe or hoping on a plane to visit our sons in Germany and Spain!

6. What is your go-to lockdown book/podcast/movie/tv show?

Anne with an E on Netflix.

NT live.

7. Best lockdown larder tip?

* Pulses! Flexible, cheap and good for protein.

* Bulk cook and freeze.

8. How are you keeping in touch with friends and family?

Zoom

FaceTime

Skype

Telephone

Neighbours – socially distanced conversations out the front or over the fence.

Thank you so much, Janet.

Janet is one of our amazing Team Empathy volunteers and helps in our Poverty Trap and Desperate Journeys immersive experiences.

If you’re interested in helping us craft a little more empathy in the world then we’d love to speak to you!

Our small but wonderful team is made up of people like Janet, who believe in a world where people care deeply about each other and are moved to take compassionate action to help those less privileged than themselves.

Please do get in touch!

Stay in touch, keep connected and take care of yourselves – and others.

#chooseempathy #randomactsofkindness #radicalniceness

Craft and Conversation

A Spotlight on Wednesday’s Craft and Conversation, which started a year ago.

A joint initiative run by Empathy Action and Tonbridge Welcomes Refugees, it brings together women from Syria and the UK. Here’s what it’s all about by our Becky Matthewson, a regular volunteer at craft and conversation.

Hello, I’m Becky and I volunteer with Craft & Conversation. I’d like to invite you to take a seat, grab a coffee, and hear a little of what we get up to most Wednesday mornings, a time that has become a highlight of my week.

First on the scene is always Sandy; she lights a single scented candle and warms the place up. On goes the kettle, out comes the cake, and the door is propped open in welcome.

Sandy is the gentle engine of this gathering. Her ideas fuel its smooth running, and she shows us all how we can create whatever we want.

We are a smallish group of women from near and afar. Some of us can craft, others are better at brewing the coffee (like me, although I’m grateful that Sandy never gives up on my efforts).

Each week we find needles and threads, wools or coloured pencils, or grey offcuts from fleece blankets produced for refugees (now ready to be upcycled in a very imaginative way).

Sometimes the group is quiet with concentration, the calm punctuated only by a low recital of numbers, in Arabic or English, as we count our stitches. At other times, there is raucous laughter when one of the native English speakers attempts to learn the Arabic word for, say, “bubble” (it’s a tricky one).

Together we sit and talk around a big red table, making anything from juggling balls to friendship bracelets. Today we crochet squares in cream and blue. When finished they will be shaped into a blanket for a Syrian friend with a new-born.

We even know how to build gingerbread houses for Christmas.

Which leads me onto food, because we always end up talking about food. It seems that the Syrian women among us cook in a very go-slow and thoughtful kind of way – never is it a shove-in-the-oven affair. The way they describe it makes us all stop and listen. The flavours, the spices, the eating of it. It’s a taste of home.

Craft & Conversation meets on Wednesdays between 10.30am and 12.00pm. If you’d like to be involved in this, or other work, please get in touch. Craft may not be your forte, but neither is it mine (I know I’m better at making tea).

It’s a wonderful opportunity to be part of something rather special.

Desperate Journeys coming to Tunbridge Wells

Desperate Journeys is coming to Royal Victoria Place in Tunbridge Wells, from mid-February to the end of March 2019.

(UPDATE: Press Release: Desperate Journeys comes to Royal Victoria Place Tunbridge Wells)

‘Everyone should experience it’

‘You have definitely opened my eyes to this crisis’

‘An experience that will surely stay with me forever’

‘An inspired, thought-provoking experience’

The saying goes, “to understand another person, you must first walk a mile in their shoes.”

Desperate Journeys is a powerful immersive experience, designed by Empathy Action to increase people’s understanding of the global refugee crisis and build empathy with the 25.4 million refugees living in our world today.

Each ‘Journey’ can be made by up to 30 people at a time and lasts approximately 90 minutes, (there is also a 60 minute ‘Story’ version) including a reflective discussion at the end. Journeys will take place at set times during the opening hours of Royal Victoria Place, throughout the week and at weekends. We are offering the experience to schools, community groups, charities and businesses…in fact everyone who is interested! Our aim is to involve as many Tunbridge Wells people as possible, not just as participants, but also, we hope, in other ways.

Following a successful launch last year at Tonbridge Baptist Church, and further events held at Tonbridge Girls Grammar school and Sevenoaks School, we have seen a growing demand from groups wishing to experience Desperate Journeys, as well as our other empathy programmes.

* * * * * To book, click here * * * *

We need your help

Empathy Action must build its volunteer base to meet the demand. One of our main objectives in running Desperate Journeys this Spring is to grow our team in preparation for all that lies ahead. We have many opportunities for people to get involved, not just with Desperate Journeys, but with our wider work too. They include:

Joining the wonderful cast as an actor (no prior experience necessary!)
Joining our brilliant backstage team
Joining the super set-building team and helping transform empty spaces.
Helping with the hosting, promotion, marketing, ticketing and administration of our events.
Coming along with friends or family and taking the journey yourself.
Connecting Empathy Action with contacts of yours who may be interested in experiencing or hosting our empathy activities; whether they be schools, businesses, community groups, churches or other organisations or sponsors to help take it even further.

*(The Desperate Journeys experience is suitable for Year 6 and upwards)

Empathy Action is entirely made up of volunteers and we are always looking for regular volunteers (full-time or part-time) to grow the charity and to help us in our work of changing hearts and inspiring action in a hurting world.

To book, click here.

Alternatively, do get in touch and speak to us directly. We’d love to hear from you!

Why are we doing Work Experience with EA

2018 Summer EA Interns

We chose to do work experience here at Empathy Action, our names are Dan (year 12), Leigha (year 10) and Tilly (year 12) all from Bennett Memorial. We thought we’d share a little more about it:

Q.Why did you want to do Work Experience at Empathy Action?

Dan: I wanted to do work experience here at Empathy Action because I was challenged at a simulation that they ran ‘to do something’ with the feelings I had felt about poverty. I really wanted to do something.

Leigha: I wanted to do work experience with Empathy Action because I wanted to develop an understanding of world poverty and help a cause that works against it.

Tilly: I chose to do my work experience at Empathy Action because I wanted to have one work experience placement that was a little bit more meaningful and would help to create and inspire the change that we need to be seeing.

Q.What have you been up to?

We’ve been getting to know the team, helping with the tagging and bagging of handicrafts for Action Packs, Wedding Favours and simulations, crafting social media posts (using the hashtag #EmpathyActionStories), sorting out the vast amount of simulations materials and diving into the craft of inspiring compassionate action.

We learnt a subtle difference between commanding people to take action and inspiring people to take action and how empathy can be a powerful tool for social change. We were able to read stories and watch videos around other people who have changed as a result of empathising.

It’s been insightful into the world of charity being here and I would strongly suggest other wanting to help change their world to consider getting stuck into a charity like Empathy Action. Thank you for having us!

Photo Credit Leigha Swaffer

My Desperate Journey by Jenny Maslin

Part time EA administrator, full time singer, musician and teacher, Jenny Maslin

My name’s Jenny and I volunteer with Empathy Action as an administrator. Having sat through many staff meetings and heard all about the planning and preparations that have gone into creating our new simulation, I was excited (and a little nervous) to see what it was all about. I experienced Desperate Journeys as a participant during their launch week and co-founders Ben and Matt asked me to write about my experience…

I joined a group of 26 strangers from all different walks of life, none of us quite sure what to expect. We were welcomed by the simulation’s director, given a passport, some money and asked to remove our shoes before entering one of the seven marquee tents that housed the whole experience. From there the journey began as we were thrown into a situation where, as a group, we had to make multiple decisions for our group’s safety, under pressure and with limited information available. I won’t give any plot spoilers, but will focus instead on the two questions that were asked at the end:

‘What struck you?’ and ‘How did you feel?’

When not volunteering with Empathy Action, I work as a musician and teacher. Sound and silence are a big part of my life and would therefore naturally be a focus for me as I walked through the dark, maze-like set. I found myself making observations between the cleverly designed soundtrack that followed us and the feelings I was experiencing: joyful party music; incoming explosions; the harsh voices of soldiers as they burst in on us; pants, sobs and cries of fear from the actors; the heavy silence as our group sat in darkness on a dingy to Europe, listening to the stories of desperation from a fellow passenger; the subtle changes in music as we turned corners and faced new, improved or worsened situations. I was struck with a sense of powerlessness, swept up in a tide of sounds and people I’d just met, travelling to an unknown destination.

I felt frustrated by the lack of autonomy of group decisions, and could see parallels with the loss of freedom of choice a refugee would face. I felt loss when we heard that our host’s family home and street had been flattened, and grief too when the same family had to make the horrendous decision to separate when applying to relocate. Earlier that day I had been enjoying the first signs of spring, gardening in my quiet peaceful neighbourhood. I had exchanged texts with my sister who has chosen to spend 2 years in Australia as part of a secondment scheme. I miss her very much but know that she is safe and happy, will be returning this year, and that I can visit her without many of the bureaucratic hurdles we experienced in the simulation. These feelings were brought home further in a concluding and powerful speech from one of our volunteers, and a resettled refugee herself. Reem told us of her family’s struggle to flee her home country and resettle in the UK. They are still waiting for the remainder of her family to be granted asylum. Her story brought me to tears. I left the simulation in deep thought, humbled and very moved.

As we drew to a conclusion, we were told that there are 65.6 million people worldwide (a similar amount to the entire population of the UK) who have been forcibly displaced from their home: That’s around 1 in 100 of the world’s population. Refugees don’t start out as refugees. They are mothers, fathers, friends, colleagues, students, professionals… human beings just like us. We must engage with this world crisis and do what we can to help.

More accounts of Desperate Journeys: