Colectiva empatía nos muestra que no hace falta ser docente para participar en proyectos de educación desde el respeto a los animales.
What is Collective Empathy?
Colectiva Empamática is a project that originated from the Madrid Anti-Speciesist Assembly. Several members of the collective saw the need to work on the anti-speciesist message with children as well. It began as a committee within the assembly, adding children's activities to some of the assembly's existing events.
How do you contact schools to carry out your activities?
We have contacted the centers in several ways: by sending an email to the centers with our activities and our presentation, and other times it has been through contacts, teachers we knew in the schools who have introduced us to their space.
We haven't only gone to schools; in fact, that's been the least of what we've done. The places where we've been most readily available for activities have been urban summer camps, community centers, neighborhood associations, and children's activities outside of school.
Why do you think it's important to work on empathy in education?
We believe that empathy is both a capacity and a very important value that allows us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. This helps, for example, to avoid judgment, to respect others, and to wish them well. For us, it's important to emphasize that differences are not a reason for discrimination, but simply characteristics that make life more diverse and interesting. From this perspective, we reflect with the youngest children on the relationships they (and our society in general) have with other animals. We believe that everyone can develop and cultivate empathy throughout their lives. Children, in general, tend to have a good amount, although as they grow, depending on what they learn and experience, they may lose it and drift away from it.
How do you approach the message of respect for animals?
The approach we want to take is that we are all animals, and that's why we all like and dislike the same things. For example, we don't like being locked up, being hit, or being alone and isolated. We do like being with our friends, playing freely, and so on.
What kind of activities do you do?
The first activity we started with was storytelling. Right now, we're doing one about the circus and the story of some giraffes who wanted to escape. We also did an activity we found on your website for slightly older children. The activity involves dividing them into groups, and each group imagines a scenario: a circus, a zoo, or animals we live with. Each group gets into character; some are circus animals, others are animal trainers, and so on for all the scenarios. Then we have a group discussion about how they felt.
We recently also incorporated into the activities a song by Petit pop, "We don't want to go to the zoo"; we taught it to them with a choreography and we sang and danced.
Sometimes we also bring stickers and color them in.
Are you happy with the results of your activities?
Overall, we are very happy with the results. During the activities or after we finish them, we hear the children make very positive comments, such as that animals should be free or that when they went to the zoo, it was true that the animals were sad, etc.
Although the results are not always visible, sometimes it seems that things don't work and are forgotten or haven't sunk in enough, but a seed remains that can grow throughout life and at any moment the connection is made and suddenly something transforms and a change occurs in thinking and in the way of acting.
We know that with what we do, we usually don't get immediate results, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And that's why we don't get discouraged.