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News From the Green Blanket
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Empathy Europe-Bound
Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland have now joined Roots of Empathy’s ever-growing list of countries hosting the program.
In Northern Ireland, the program has started in schools in the Belfast area, thanks to two government health care delivery organizations that are acting as Roots of Empathy lead agencies, the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. (A lead agency is an organization that works with Roots of Empathy over an extended period to bring the program to a specific area.) Read more >>
At a mid-year training session in Glasgow, Scotland, Instructors participate in a Family Visit demonstration.
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New Bilingual Roots of Empathy Website
We are pleased to report that Roots of Empathy now has a brand new website! Our new home online features a fresh, clean design; improved search functionality; updated information about our programs in Canada and around the world, and an expanded media section. We take particular pride in wishing our French speaking visitors «bienvenue», offering key information, resources and the most recent news in French as well as English.
We would like to thank the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Education for its generous contribution to this project, in support of Roots of Empathy’s commitment to providing equitable access to our programming in both of Canada’s official languages. Roots of Empathy programs have been running since 2005 with a dedicated French curriculum, and today our French programs reach children in nine Canadian provinces.
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Shine a Light
Bryan and Colette Summers
For Bryan and Colette Summers of Calgary, Alberta, Roots of Empathy is indeed changing the world child by child – they’ve seen it happen as volunteer parents in the program.
Two years ago, Colette, who grew up in a Francophone community in Saskatchewan, brought her baby Marseille to a Grade 1 classroom at a French school in Calgary, Terre-des-Jeunes. She was on maternity leave that year from her job at Cenovus Energy (which this year has become Roots of Empathy’s founding corporate sponsor in Alberta).
Colette was struck by how children in her classroom seemed to fall into two camps: those who seemed hesitant or disconnected from the world around them, and those who were more confident and engaged. It reminded her of what she had read in the first chapter of Mary Gordon’s book.
One girl in particular seemed particularly reclusive and easily overwhelmed. But Collette noticed that the more she and Marseille came to the class, the more this girl seemed to open up and become happier. On their last visit... Read more >>
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Mary's Message
 Recent world events have challenged humanity’s capacity for empathy. In recent days we have seen the terrible devastation wildfires have brought to Slave Lake, Alberta, where a third of the Canadian town was razed. Flooding has also disrupted lives and destroyed property in several regions. Tornadoes in the U.S. have killed dozens.
Earlier this year, our world was fully behind Egypt’s peaceful, mainly young, protesters, and still in the news we see citizens in other Middle East countries engaging in protest and even combat to overthrow repressive dictatorships. Before that, multiple tragedies had befallen Japan, triggered by an earthquake. By now some of our attention has shifted away from these events. The people involved in the earlier events have not entirely been forgotten, but I have a sense that humanity’s empathetic response is no longer as strong as it was. It is not that we are fickle or don’t care anymore – it may be a question of how many things we can care about at once.
Read more >>
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