Awakin Circle is the creation of a time and space where we can step out of our daily activities to meditate and engage in a circle of reflective sharing. Every week on Thursday, we come together to sit in silence, share some personal insights and some hugs and tea afterwards.
A palpable sense of gratitude and community weaves through it all. The ripples of inner transformation are countless -- and continue on.
Details:

• 7:00 am: 20 mins of collective silence; its unguided, without any instructions or music. A bell denotes the opening and three bells indicate the end of the first 20 mins.
• 7:20 am: A short reading (sent out earlier via email), followed by a circle of personal stories and reflections from everyday life. We invite everyone to share thoughts that come up for them.
• 8:00 am: Some tea and hugs in silence. Afterwards, folks who can stay for informal time can connect in Empathy Circle for smaller conversations.
  
  

Being a facilitator, when we see children changing their behaviors towards empathy is a beautiful feeling. Identifying own problem, exploring and interacting with others to better understand the situation, finding solutions with validating other’s views, and coordinating well to execute the solutions is what students go through. As a result we have experienced that even a reserved and afraid child has become ready to initiate conversation in our sessions.
 
There are more important things that we have seen through students that we have worked with on E-DFC. They are as follows:-

1. Seeing from others’ perspectives
2. Validating others’ world view, exploring and debating
3. Sense of acceptance
4. Understanding problems from multiple perspectives
5. Designing user centric solutions
6. Self-awareness
7. Collaborative direction/space, not compelled by ego
8. Project planning and execution
9. Initiating conversations
10. Sense of appreciation
11. Sense of confidence
12. Iterative learning
13. Acting out of personal courage
14. Creativity, expressed creativity
15. Self-initial research
16. Social ease/gender

"...the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning."  Carl Rogers
An empathy circle is a space to explore on the theme of empathy. The objective of this circle is to cultivate a culture of empathy within the community.  It tends to nurture and deepen empathy with ourselves and others. Deeper empathy has many benefits Such as:-

1. It fosters learning, connection, social change, supports sustainable collaborative action, transforms conflict, it fosters resilience, as well as builds trust and heals.
2. It helps to deepen our empathic listening skills.
3. We will be able to find more clarity and deeper understanding of our feelings and needs.
4. We will be able to explore and share with openness and curiosity.

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1. To understand a complex world (full here)
“The ability to understand what someone is feeling” – that’s the textbook definition of empathy.  But when put into practice, empathy means a whole lot more.  It means the ability to grasp the many sides of today’s complex problems and the capacity to collaborate with others to solve them; it means being as good at listening to the ideas of others as articulating your own; it means being able to lead a team one day, and participate as a team member the next...What’s more important is that you can take the perspective of others – whether you’re designing a new technology, or negotiating, or anticipating the uncertain. Indeed, how well we do — whether in the classroom or the boardroom — depends more than ever on how well we forge and navigate relationships. In this way, empathy is the new literacy: essential for us to communicate, collaborate, and lead."

2. To design solutions to problems (full here)
"The core principles of design thinking are to empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Teaching design thinking can be a powerful way of teaching students empathy in that it teaches them how to solve another person’s problems by providing creative and innovative solutions that relate to his or her needs...Empathy is the first step in design thinking because it is a skill that allows us to understand and share the same feelings that others feel. Through empathy, we are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes and connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance, or situation. Some questions to consider: