The Empathy Symbol stands for:
reaching out to the “other” and then opening up to truly understand each other.
Use the empathy symbol to indicate your support for a world in which we all can get along.
Empathy: The first step to peace in our families, schools, communities, nations, world
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Why Empathy? Why Now?
Heinz Kohut defined empathy as "the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person.” We think that's what the world needs today. As the cultural wars rage — Judeo/Christians vs. Muslims, immigrants vs. native-borns, Red States vs. Blue States — what we all need is to walk in each others' shoes, to empathize with the other’s position, situation, upbringing, life experiences and feelings. Empathy leads to respect and caring for each other, and that is the sure path to peace.
Empathy Commitment
We’ve heard about people getting the empathy symbol as a tattoo in Texas, Germany,
and Australia. We appreciate this permanent commitment to spreading
the message about the importance of empathy! Check out the ways people have put the empathy symbol permanently in their lives and out front to the world. If you don’t want to go as
far as a tattoo, though, consider using the empathy symbol as your
signature under your name on your e-mail. You can get a print-ready version from our Materials page. Have you got other ideas? Please share them with us and we’ll put you in our Empathy Symbol Gallery.Empathy News
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Featured Empathy Promoter
Children’s Culture Connection is an organization that connects kids from America with kids who live in 12 different developing or war-torn countries. Kids form relationships with peers in these countries, and learn to understand life from a new perspective in a very personal way. This learning about each other is a two-way street. Children’s Culture Connection also runs a summer camp program for middle school students. This past summer, students from several schools in Minnesota connected with students in Afghanistan. This is what CCC said about the experience: “The American students learned about Afghanistan beyond the headlines. They learned how illiteracy affects the ability of people to understand the world, and how easy it is to be brainwashed. Their participation in the camp and outreach to the vulnerable Afghan students allowed them to discover a new view on the world, and how human connectedness can bring hope to the most hopeless place on earth.”
Check it out: http://childrenscultureconnection.org/
See our previously featured Empathy Promoters.
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Using the Empathy Symbol
The empathy symbol is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. You may copy, distribute and transmit the material on this site and the empathy symbol as long as you attribute the work to www.EmpathySymbol.com. You may not use this work for commercial purposes without additional license. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work , without additional license. You may seek additional license to do so by contacting us.
We are seeking partners to help spread the Empathy Symbol, and the value of empathy in our world. If you are interested in creating t-shirts or other clothing, jewelry, coffee mugs, or other items using the empathy symbol, please contact us.
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Read Our Blog
- Join the conversation about empathy and the empathy symbol at
Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
This fantastic website is a one-stop resource for all things about empathy: articles, talks, videos, discussions, science, history, interviews, and much more. You can also join causes that support empathy toward various groups. Please check it out at: cultureofempathy.com.
