Empathy is the capacity for and action of understanding others' feelings, thoughts, and experiences. It gives us the opportunity to spend some time walking in someone else's shoes and seeing through someone else's eyes. It offers us the ability to suspend judgment and respect another person's experience of the world. It blurs boundaries and extends identity.
It impacts our relationships with family, friends, and our local communities, and extends our connections to other cultures and nations.
It makes us better listeners, learners, and leaders.
The world may be more connected than ever, but those links can feel loose and impersonal. Empathy helps us build meaningful, thoughtful connections.
In a world of 7.6 billion people, it helps remind us that we are more alike than different. It invokes our common humanity.
Our interest in empathy is not expressed through this initiative alone. It is threaded through our support of safety-net organizations and social justice allies. Our desire to increase empathy in the world is not to further one particular cause. It is with the hope that in helping to build the capacity for empathy, people will take it, act on it, and make the world a better place.
