Posts Tagged ‘Conflict’

UPDATE - 2 January 2009

‘Bridging the empathy gap’ has made it to the next round of voting as the most popular idea in the ‘Government Reform’ section and in the Top 10 most popular ideas overall. Next round of voting starts on 5th January to decide the 10 ideas that will be presented to the new President. I’m very grateful to everyone who supported the idea in the first round and ask that you continue with that support into the second round of voting. Ian

This post is a bit of a departure from normal as it’s a message mainly written by someone else.

It’s a request for your support in bringing a very specific, ‘peace-making’ proposal to the attention of President Elect Barack Obama. I’m excited about this, not only for the idea itself but because it’s done in way where my single vote has a measurable impact on the chances of its success (my own vote moved the counter from 156 to 157 votes casts).

The idea has been developed by some of my friends and colleagues at the Center For Nonviolent Communication and they’re hoping to get overwhelming support for this idea (as a minimum they need around 1,200 votes by 30 December 2008). Even though I’m not American I’m still affected by, and interested in, decisions of the Administration and this approach gives me a voice without interfering.

I invite you to have a look at the copy of the Email below and if you’re drawn to it, then follow the instructions for voting. You might also consider linking to this post, copying it, stealing it, Digging it, Stumbling it, or anything else you can think of that might give it wider attention.

If you’re not drawn to, you can still do the same, just you probably wouldn’t want to vote!

Here’s the message:

We are requesting support for a proposal to begin a movement to increase the empathic ability of those who serve in our government. Literally 4 minutes of your time with only 5 steps to bring an idea before the Obama team that could effect the kind of change we are all hoping to see!

President Elect Barack Obama said, “I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.” Change.org has created a forum that will submit the top ten voted for proposals to the Obama team for review. Ideas for Change in America is a citizen-driven effort to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and Congress can turn the broad call for “change” across the country into specific policies.

We have posted a proposal named “Bridging the Empathy Gap – Yes We Can” designed to make empathy central to government functioning, tying it to Obama’s repeated highlighting of empathy as a crucially needed quality. The proposal is appended at the end of this message for your review.

To make it to the 2nd round of voting on this site, we probably need to have at least 1,200 votes for this idea in the coming week. If you are moved to have this idea brought to the attention of the administration, please take the steps below as soon as possible. Ideas that get a lot of votes quickly are posted as “ideas on the rise” and have more of a chance of getting votes.

1. Click on: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/bridging_the_empathy_gap_-_yes_we_can (or if the link doesn’t work go to http://www.change.org/ideas and search for this proposal or for “empathy”)
2. Click on Vote! and a window will open to create an account asking for name, email and a password
3. Fill in window to create your account
4. Return to your email to complete registration by clicking on the link provided in the email from change.org
5. Click on Vote again and you are complete! The “Vote” button will have changed from blue to red and the text will say “Voted”.” It will only let you vote once for each item.

Once you have an account you can invite friends and get them to vote as well.

Our hope/goal/intention is to create an overwhelming response to our proposal so it can get the attention it needs to be brought to fruition.

Thank you for giving your time in this way.

Catherine Cadden, Jori Manske, Kathleen McFerran, Miki Kashtan, Sylvia Haskvitz

HERE’S THE PROPOSAL

Bridging the Empathy Gap – Yes we can!

President-Elect Barack Obama has spoken repeatedly about empathy, which he defines as “the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us.” In his words, “And that strikes me as the most important quality that we need in America right now and around the world right now.” Empathy is a value we can cultivate in our government now.

We propose to create an inter-departmental office of empathy (or a division within a Department of Peace if one is established) that can support the closing of the empathy deficit by employing strategies such as the following:

1. Implementing specific processes and methods for making empathy central to government operations both within government and in every sector of society to support meaningful use of our resources.

2. Identifying specific offices, agencies, and individuals within government that would benefit from intensive training in empathy skills.

3. Utilizing advanced empathic facilitation as a foundation for decision-making to support efficient and productive processes in all branches of goverment.

4. Assessing the impact of government policies and decisions on the overall purpose of bridging the empathy gap.

5. Creating public forums for dialogue to create empathic connection between people across differences – political, religious, ideological, racial, class, etc. The purpose of such forums would be bridging divides in our nation.

6. Creating and proposing curriculum based on Nonviolent Communication (www.cnvc.org) to all schools for teaching empathy skills.

7. Creating an Empathy Corps – volunteers trained in empathy skills to go into conflict zones domestically and internationally to support diffusion of conflict through empathic connection.

“Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.”
- President-Elect Barack Obama