Empathy Week
Every February.
Building the capacity for empathy in students around the world.
About the event
Empathy Week launched in 2020 as a way to build young people’s capacity for empathy all over the world. Its aim is to build the ‘Empathy Generation’. This is a generation of students that seek to understand before acting and have the skills to connect with others distant from themselves and those that may have different opinions to them.
Focusing on developing the skill of empathy, builds successful relationships amongst students and staff that ultimately improve wellbeing, happiness and academic success. Empathy Week has a full program of free, empathy building resources that centre on a collection of yearly short films documenting the lives of people around the world.
How to approach it
The best way to approach empathy week is by using the fantastic free Empathy Week resources themselves. In 2023 Empathy Week explored the lives of five people from Nepal, their life stories, aspirations and worldviews. These five short films are free and only require an email sign-up to access with the full catalogue of previous Empathy Week resources available.
The films complement a 5-week programme of supporting learning resources to develop the skill of empathy in the classroom.
Empathy Week's resources and films are differentiated into five age categories, spanning ages 5 to 18, allowing students of all ages to access social concepts at the right cognitive level.
Conversation starter
Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings and experiences of another person. But we can also empathise with other living things such as plants and animals. What is better about being able to understand the feelings of other beings? How does being able to empathise well change our actions?
