What is Empathy?

Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people are feeling, see things from others’ perspectives, and imagine yourself in their place. It is an important life skill to be developed, and can help you personally, academically and professionally, in five key ways.

We believe that empathy can be taught from a young age, and it’s one of the key life skills that we practise in our school sessions.

In the wake of the controversy over public comments made recently by MPs - namely Diane Abbott’s letter in the Guardian newspaper and the comments made by Miriam Cates at the National Conservatism conference (the focus of this piece, but hardly an exhaustive list) - we wanted to unpack these episodes and see what learning opportunities could be gleaned from these painful situations, with empathy at the forefront.

In the wake of the controversy over Diane Abbott’s letter in the Guardian newspaper, we wanted to unpack the episode and see what learning opportunities could be gleaned from this painful situation, with empathy at the forefront. This first piece is from our trustee Zahara, and the second piece is from our Founder & Executive Director Sharon, which also looks at the MP Miriam Cate’s use of the antisemitic term ‘Cultural Marxism’.

By Miriam, SNS' Facilitation Officer

We’re incredibly excited to be bringing back Live Tours for Solutions Not Sides flagship youth education programme next year, bringing Palestinian and Israeli speakers into classrooms, live and in-person, on a large scale for the first time since COVID-19 put a stop to this back in early 2020.