Teaching Resources

25 minutes

13 - 14

Enhancement of empathy outside school (friends, family, strangers
Development of empathic behavior at school

• Coloured pens and markers, if possible a different colour for each participant
• Enough paper for one sheet per person
• Flipchart paper and markers

Self-awareness

The purpose of giving each participant a different colour is to give people the idea that everyone is unique and that the group is composed of a rainbow of identities. If you have a large group and two or more people have to share the same colour pen, ask them to use different styles of writing.
If you wish, you can make the activity a little more sophisticated by suggesting that people draw their personal flower with longer or shorter petals or rays according to how public or private they feel a particular aspect of their identity is. Bigger petals reach further out into society and are therefore more public.

1. To warm up, ask people to get into pairs to form buzz groups. Ask them to pretend that they are strangers and to introduce themselves to each other.

2. Now ask people to reflect what is interesting or important to know about someone else when you first meet, and brainstorm the general categories of information. For example, name, age, sex, nationality, family role, religion, age, gender, ethnicity, job/study, taste in music, hobbies, sports, general likes and dislikes and more.

3. Now explain that participants are going to find out how much each of them has in common with others in the group. Hand out the paper and pens and explain that the first step is for each of them to draw a representation of their identity. They should think of themselves like flowers; aspects of their identity radiate out into their society. Ask people to consider the eight to ten most important aspects of their identity and to draw their personal flower.

4. Tell people to go around and compare their flowers. When they find someone else with whom they share a petal, they should write that person’s name near the petal.. Allow 15 minutes for this.

5. Now come back into plenary and ask people to talk about how individual each of them was. You could ask:
- Which aspects of identity do people have in common and which are unique?
- How similar and how different are people in the group? Do people have more in common with each other than they have differences?

6. Finally, do a group brainstorm of the aspects of identity that people choose and those that they are born with.

To assess the activity, a discussion on what people have discovered about themselves and about each other and the implications for human rights should take place.