Kohima, December 5 (MExN): An inter-school fest, Constellation’22 will be organised in collaboration with Assam Rifles Public School (ARPS), Kohima and Project Empathy on December 12 and 13.
Students from five schools— Christ King Higher Secondary School, Modern Higher Secondary School, G Rio School, ARPS Kohima and ARPS Chieswema will be participating in the festival, according to an official release on Monday.
On this connection, a Live Radio discussion programme on Project Empathy will be broadcasted on December 7 from 3:30 pm onwards at All India Radio, Kohima, FM Tragopan, 103Mhz. Vibha Lakhera, the Founder of Project Empathy, along with Monika Bhardwaj, Principal ARPS, Kohima and Selvinuo of ARPS Kohima will be participating in the Live Discussion, it informed.
Elaborating on Project Empathy, the release stated that it was conceptualised in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic, to bring ‘alive’ conversations around emotions, feelings, fears amongst schoolchildren and teachers.
Highlighting the benefits of empathy education or empathy training, the release stated that Project Empathy initiated a six-month long intervention in Boniyar in Kashmir, Kohima and Chieswema in Nagaland, and in New Delhi in 2022 as the first phase of the project.
Workshops for teachers were conducted to orient the educators about the importance of addressing empathy in the schools and about the format of the intervention. The project was backed with the baseline research in collaboration with Sreepriya Menon who is a trained therapist, it said.
In Kohima, the Principal of ARPS, Kohima, Monika said that the project has been successful in helping the students become emotionally courageous to open up about their feelings and fears, as per the release.
Similarly, Selvi, the school counselor and project coordinator also said that teachers in the school have found it easier to share their problems as a result of the project.
Meanwhile, the release stated that empathy training is a new topic which is not a part of the academic education. However, it has generated interest amongst the teachers to not only educate themselves about the concepts included in the project, but also to deliver them to the students with utmost care and sincerity.
Certain concepts like ‘Empathy and Identity’ have made the students take a note of the multiple layers of identity that they carry in themselves and observe the issues that their friends have been dealing with like ‘body shaming’ or ‘not feeling good enough.’
It has resulted in the students becoming more confident about sharing their feelings and emotions with peers and teachers and helped in addressing the discriminatory thoughts and a sense of separation that children experience from one another.
The project has thrived on storytelling, journaling, artwork, discussions, nukkad nataks and many such creative ways of introducing empathy and compassion to the school ecosystem. It is important to bring such concepts more and more in the regular discourse of the schools to sow seeds of change in the consciousness of our students, it added.
