Aditi Padiyar

In imbibing professional and academic skills, we, as a community, have forgotten to imbibe the most important value one must possess to be a good human being – the virtue of kindness.

Lisa Currie

Being kind makes us better human beings. But then that is just one of the several benefits of including kindness in the school curriculum. Did you know that “kind” children will be more alert and sharp with their academics? Learn more amazing facts and find the answer to the question, “Why teaching kindness in schools is essential?”

While discussing the idea of schools contributing to building compassionate citizens of tomorrow, a friend of ours told us about two organizations, across the border, in Pakistan. In a country that appears politically volatile and unstable to the outsider, the work that these organizations are doing with schools there is very worthy indeed. We feature here short profiles. A network for compassion The Compassionate School Network (CSN) is the first of its kind in the world; it is a locally developed project inspired by the Charter for Compassion, a TED prize global initiative. Launched in Karachi in 2012, CSN is working towards bringing schools across the country to be a part of the Network by 2018 reaching approximately two million children so that they become compassionate leaders in the coming decades. The Compassionate School Network (CSN) partners with existing schools in Pakistan to disseminate compassionate skills and understanding to both teachers and students. The nine skills of compassion include courage, forgiveness, mindfulness, gratitude, self-compassion, empathy, humility, integrity, and altruism. The objective being for students to understand, acquire, and practice these skills from elementary to senior school and to create awareness of the social benefits of compassion across the country. The project starts with a four-day teacher training workshop that includes in-depth presentations on the nine skills along with interactive discussions. After completion of the training, supplementary lesson plans especially designed for this program are provided to the teachers. The plans are incorporated in the existing lesson plans from grades 1-10 and are rolled out during the school calendar year. The CSN team works closely with the school management overseeing the smooth running of the plans. Student engagement activities are also held from time to time where students interact with children from other schools in the Network. Voices of empathy Nidhi Shendurnikar Not knowing, not meeting a person and yet picturing him/her in forms that are negative, demonizing and stereotypical! In our imagination, the ‘other’ is always a villain, one to be despised, demeaned only because he/she is different from what we are. Have we ever thought of how children are impacted by the phenomenon of ‘otherization’ and how it contributes to raising a generation that rarely questions, comfortable with stereotypes, and experiences pride in supporting extreme and violent forms of nationalism? A team of youngsters from Pakistan is challenging ideas of difference and superiority based on religion, ethnicity, caste, and gender. ‘Rabtt’, derived from the Urdu word Rabta, meaning connection, is a social enterprise based