Empathy and Young Changemaking

The Role of Empathy in a World of Exponential Change

In a world of rapid change, society is confronted by an increasing number of complex challenges and opportunities. Ensuring solutions will outpace problems requires effective collaboration and the ability to organize into fluid teams-of-teams, where every player must be a contributor and a leader.

Effective collaboration in this environment is only possible with empathy: the ability to understand and respond to the feelings of others. In a changemaker world, empathy is as fundamental as reading, writing, and math. This creates a new social imperative to ensure that every child fully develops their own innate capacity for empathy.

One hundred years ago, accelerating change had reached the point that society needed everyone to be literate. Now society needs everyone to be ready to thrive in a world of constant, rapid, exponential change as a skilled changemaker. It needs every young person, parent, and educator to grasp this new paradigm for success in growing up — and in life.

Learning to Lead While Young

Our understanding of the changemaking power of young people comes directly from our community of 3,500 Ashoka Fellows. 55 percent of our Fellows work directly with young people, and of that group, 53 percent put young people in charge of leading initiatives and projects within their organizations. Further, almost half of our Ashoka Fellows started their first changemaker ventures before the age of 21.

Building a Networked Movement with Key Partners

At Ashoka, we are working every day to build and cultivate a community of change leaders who see that the world now requires everyone to be a changemaker. Together with the Ashoka Young Changemakers and Ashoka Fellows, we collaborate to transform institutions and cultures worldwide so they support changemaking for the good of society. Among our key partners are Changemaker campuses, Changemaker schools, and school districts, aligned youth-serving organizations, community leaders, schools of education, teachers’ unions, religious organizations, media partners, publishers, as well as businesses and government leaders.