How to encourage empathy

Rescued lion brothers, Tsar and Jamil safe at Shamwari and being cared for by Glen Vena and the team

With your support, we’ve been busy celebrating empathy, along with thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of students from around the world.  

This extraordinary annual festival of storytelling, film and events, established and run by our partners at Empathy Week, brings people together in a special way. We learnt more about each other, how to see things from other perspectives and, most importantly, learnt to build our empathy skills.  

Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s emotions. This is coupled with the ability to imagine, and be sensitive to, what someone else might be thinking or feeling. Having empathy towards others means kinder, more compassionate societies. So, as you can imagine, it’s vital to teach young people about the power of empathy.

In fact, this is a skill that needs to be practised, just like other ‘subjects’ such as maths or English. But what’s great is that empathy can be taught and learnt. Partnering with Empathy Week on the 11th March, our Education team ran an online teacher ‘Continuing Professional Development’ training session, to empower teachers around the world and help them to integrate empathy into the wider curriculum and teaching.

Simao the baby chimp is now safe

With the session hosted by our Executive President, Will Travers OBE, we were joined by two expert panellists, whose jobs revolve around empathy towards animals. Glen Vena is the Animal Care Manager at Born Free’s big cat sanctuary in Shamwari, while Jenny Desmond, Co-Founder of Liberia Chimp Rescue and Protection has dedicated her life to rescuing and rehabilitating chimpanzees orphaned through the illegal pet and bushmeat trade.

Glen engagingly described himself as the ‘luckiest human’ thanks to his job – caring daily for big cats rescued from appalling conditions. He told us about the journey the cats go through, thanks to his team’s care and attention. From being untrusting of humans, each one slowly relaxes in their presence, revealing their true characters

Jenny, working with caregivers from the local community, has seen a huge shift, not only in the view of the chimps’ dedicated carers, but the community as a whole. The work of Liberia Chimp Rescue and Protection enables others to see each animal as individuals, with unique needs and personalities.

Understanding what these animals have suffered, and the patience to let them flourish in their own time, shows how vital empathy for animals is. It informs how best we might approach working with them on a daily basis. But, how can this be translated into the classroom?

After hearing the inspirational stories from these two experts, teachers were given top tips from Born Free’s Education Officer, Charlie Smith. She talked through the different ways that empathy could be integrated into the busy school curriculum, providing ideas for short, practical activities and tasks.

For example, research has shown that observing something as simple as a blackbird hopping around a local park can help build a children’s emotional intelligence, vital building blocks for understanding their own emotions, and therefore the emotions of others. This means, wherever you are based, you can teach your students about empathy for animals. Observing wildlife in the playground whilst discussing how those animals might feel is a great place to start.

Teachers were also shown how to make use of digital content, live streaming wildlife webcams, such as footage from our partners at OrcaLab, and watching documentaries to further discussions and see animals living in their true, wild context. In addition, Charlie explained how teachers could integrate empathy into other subjects, therefore not stretching a curriculum already full to the seams with content!

Those in attendance were excited to put these ideas into practice. We hope this will be the first of many such teacher training sessions, so we can empower even more teachers and engage even more students about the importance of empathy, animal welfare, and compassionate conservation, bringing about a kinder future for wildlife.

WATCH THE WEBINAR