employees who have these leadership
skills. But the need is bigger than
the economy.
To flourish both as individuals
living up to our potential and as a
society that benefits from the potential of every individual, we must
empower ourselves and our young
people as changemakers, individuals
equipped to drive positive change—in
their own lives, in their communities,
in their companies, and in the world.
And the source of the changemaker’s
power for good is empathy.
As rules become in flux, as people
move fluidly in and between formerly homogenous groups, cultures,
and societies, and as more and more
people have power, every person
needs an ever higher level of empathetic skill in order to thrive. We
need applied empathy—the ability to
understand the feelings and perspectives of others and to use that understanding to guide our response—to act
in ways that avoid harm and contribute to positive change.
The young people at the Playworks recess are learning this (as
proven through the proxy measure of
reduced bullying rates). So are many
other young people across the globe
through their own initiative, through
the initiatives of hundreds of other
social innovators, and through the
efforts of numerous educators and
parents. But it is not enough. Ashoka,
a global organization that has learned
everything it knows from 35 years of
finding and supporting the world’s
best social entrepreneurs (individuals
developing systemic solutions to some
of the world’s most difficult problems),
launched its Start Empathy Initiative
five years ago to help society understand that empathy is the new literacy.
Recent brain science has shown
that as humans, we all have the
innate cognitive capacity for empathy. Not unlike our capacity to read,
however, it requires cultivation and
practice to develop. But empathy is
growing up so that one day, every
school will be a changemaker school.
The old model of focusing on
what we teach children—knowledge
and rules—has persisted far past its
expiration date, and it is creating an
The old model of focusing on what we teach children—
knowledge and rules—has persisted far past its
expiration date, and it is creating an urgent crisis.
not something you can teach like
you teach reading. Not surprisingly,
a world of rapid change that requires
us to develop our changemaking
abilities, starting with empathy, also
requires transforming the way we
engage and educate young people.
As part of the Start Empathy Initiative, we have built a still growing
network of over 200 Ashoka Changemaker Schools in 27 countries across
five continents. We have selected
these schools because each of them in
their own way—the network includes
every type of school and demographic—prioritizes empathy and changemaking both as modes of learning
and as essential outcomes for young
people. In doing so, they transform
what education looks like. Because
once you understand why recess has
as much value as reading and math
class, everything changes, including
what “class” even looks like.
Teams of teachers, students, staff,
and parents in these schools—“change
teams”—work to deepen their schools’
changemaker values and innovate
new ways of doing things. They also
share their innovations and work
with Ashoka and our network and
partners to drive global adoption of
this new framework for success in
urgent crisis. When we continue to
say that success means going to school
to gain knowledge that will get you a
good job, we not only foster anger and
disillusionment among growing ranks
of unemployed young people across
the world, we also undermine the real
potential of young people.
An “everyone a changemaker”
world requires us instead to focus
on who children are and have the
capacity to be (right now, not just in
the future) and how we help them unleash that capacity for the good of the
world. Doing so starts with empathy.
Ashoka is the largest network of social entrepreneurs worldwide, with nearly 3,000 Ashoka
Fellows in 70 countries putting their systemchanging ideas into practice on a global scale.
Ashoka’s mission it to support social entrepreneurs who are leading and collaborating with
changemakers, in a team-of-teams model that
addresses the fluidity of a rapidly evolving society. Ashoka believes that anyone can learn and
apply the critical skills of empathy, team work,
leadership and changemaking to be successful in
the modern world. Ashoka’s Empathy Initiative is
a collaborative platform for social entrepreneurs
and others who share this vision of a world where
every child masters empathy and who have the
insights and innovations that will make that
vision a reality.
IMAGINE l SPRING 2016 9