Empathy to Impact: Student Voices on Global Citizenship Education & Community Engagement

Scott Jamieson: welcome to the empathy to impact podcasts. I'm your host, Scott Jameson and I am very excited to be visiting

Scott Jamieson: the

Scott Jamieson: yeah. Sorry. I'm very excited to be visiting Asd today in Saudi. Arabia and I have got some middle school students here from the Compassion Club at the school who have recently done some workshops with my colleague and good friend Iv. From inspired citizens, and they've taken what they've learned there and turned that into their own initiative at the school.

Scott Jamieson: So I am really excited to learn a little bit more about what they're up to with their school, and how that focus on compassion is having an impact in their school community.

Scott Jamieson: But before we start, I'm going to pass things over to my guests today to do a bit of an introduction.

Arnav Navghare: Alright. So, Hi, we are the friendly guys. That's how we do. That's our name. So this is Lily Abdallah.

Arnav Navghare: This I'm a Tangalani Gowini. This is Arnav Naviger, and this is Liago Litwala.

Arnav Navghare: So as for.

Scott Jamieson: I'm gonna pause. You guys, I know I use my last name, but we want to go 1st names only. So we do that again.

Scott Jamieson: and just your 1st names. And if you guys want to do that each individually, that's okay, too. So basically, just your name, 1st name and your grade, and then we'll just do a quick do over on that.

Scott Jamieson: Alright! There we go

Scott Jamieson: when you're ready. Alright.

Arnav Navghare: Yeah. So we're the friendly guys. This is, I'm Lily.

Arnav Navghare: I'm tee. I'm Arnold. I'm Yahoo.

Arnav Navghare: So we are the friendly guys. The inspiration basically just came from

Arnav Navghare: us looking at like kids

Arnav Navghare: that are just sitting alone like lonely kids.

Arnav Navghare: friendless newcomers.

Arnav Navghare: So we decided, Hey, okay, let's just get them all together, as one. And then we talk to them and basically make them feel comfortable with their peers.

Arnav Navghare: Give them a few tips

Arnav Navghare: and yeah.

Arnav Navghare: and make them, and make also others feel good about each other. Be comfortable around each other. Be better friends. How to make friends most especially. That's our main.

Scott Jamieson: I love that. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Arna, go ahead.

Arnav Navghare: So we wanted to share like tips and ideas about how they could resolve their own conflicts, that they might have with their own friends some ideas, so that way they don't overstep like other people's boundaries or

Arnav Navghare: so. Other people don't overstep into their boundaries.

Arnav Navghare: Maybe you should be able to just talk freely with someone you shouldn't have to judge.

Arnav Navghare: Yeah, those are some of our like

Arnav Navghare: ideas that we tried to portray onto the group of children that we had talked to.

Scott Jamieson: The friendly guides. I love that. And I love what you're talking about just kind of making connections and kind of approaching conversation, though judgment. And that's so important. And I think that can really be beneficial. When you're at an international school, we

Scott Jamieson: see a lot of students who are kind of coming and going throughout our experience in international schools. And that's hard. That's hard for the people who are leaving a new school and coming into a new school, and it's also challenging for the people staying behind who are losing their friends at the end of each year who are moving on to a new school. There's a group that we work with inspire citizens. They're called span, which is safe passages across networks, and they work with schools to

Scott Jamieson: help to manage those transitions for all the people in our community. I will actually drop a link to their website in our show notes, because they do some really amazing work with transitions. And I think it connects a lot to what you are doing with the friendly guys

Scott Jamieson: who are your target audience. So what age group, are you? Are you working with.

Arnav Navghare: We mostly targeted like grade 3, like lower elementary, so they could have the foundation and just apply it like on their years.

Scott Jamieson: How did you pick that? Sorry? Go ahead, tell me about it. Go ahead.

Scott Jamieson: jump in, go ahead!

Arnav Navghare: Oh, yeah. So we basically just wanna work with the younger ones, cause they're probably the hardest to manage, cause they are the ones that carry this uncomfortability with them throughout all the years. So we just need to make them comfortable and get them like it saves like for what you mentioned their friends like moving on like to other schools. So we just need them to like, Okay, my friends are gone. I can make new friends. I know how to. I know the tips that are that we're given. So yeah.

Arnav Navghare: And one of our reasons why we targeted like the young lower elementary is because we want to prepare themselves for like upper, elementary middle school and high school, and maybe even college, so that they will never be alone and stuff.

Arnav Navghare: Yeah, actually, like Leaago said, our original idea. We were going to like talk to 4th and 5th graders like the upper elementary. About the next year, going into middle school.

Arnav Navghare: how you could potentially talk to people, how? Yeah, how you could socialize.

Arnav Navghare: Yep.

Scott Jamieson: I think this is so important. I think it's really challenging, especially in the digital age where we live right now in 2024, and thinking about how it's sometimes easier and more comfortable to kind of be on our phone than it is to be kind of engaging with people in our community

Scott Jamieson: and just coming out of the pandemic kind of that added a lot to this. And I think it's really important to kind of build these skills at the elementary school levels. Kinda help them navigate some of these relationships and build positive relationships and really have that sense of belonging in your school community.

Scott Jamieson: Now, you guys are in grade 6 and grade 7.

Scott Jamieson: How were you able to kind of

Scott Jamieson: think back and kind of put yourselves in the shoes of a 3rd grader for this kind of work, as you're designing your work with them.

Arnav Navghare: Okay, so can you repeat the question?

Scott Jamieson: How were you able to kind of think back to your time in 3rd grade to help connect with that audience.

Arnav Navghare: So actually this is what I did. I I took myself back to when I was in 3rd grade, and like remembered me being the only one sitting at lunch, I would sit at lunch alone and watch other friend groups associate with each other, and so I just felt like, too alone to the point where I just had to make friends.

Arnav Navghare: where I have to associate myself with other groups.

Arnav Navghare: So that's actually what inspired me. Cause I'm looking at kids now.

Arnav Navghare: They are stuck on their phones and devices making online friends. And it's really important to make like actual people like friends face to face.

Arnav Navghare: So it's that's why it's really important to

Arnav Navghare: be able to learn how to associate yourself, even if you're like, in a really cool space.

Arnav Navghare: Oh, and I see with my longtime friends that for a long time they've been struggling to like.

Arnav Navghare: keep their friendships. We have their on, and we have our on and off quite a few times. And I think that problem

Arnav Navghare: like started from like lower ages, like, when you, starting to develop more new friends, develop yourself develop your character. So yeah, that's why. Also, like, that's how we kind of got our idea.

Scott Jamieson: As part of your time at your school. How was your school kind of help prepared you?

Scott Jamieson: How sorry! How is your school? Help prepare you to navigate some of these challenging things, especially in middle school, like some of these social situations that we're talking about and thinking back to how we kind of build that sort of foundation in elementary school to help them be ready. You talked about kind of setting them up for success.

Scott Jamieson: How are what are some opportunities? Your school where your school kinda helps in terms of managing these kind of relationships and navigating conflict and building friendships like in the real world.

Arnav Navghare: Okay. So our counselors, we have something called scorpion talk is where our your group or our.

Scott Jamieson: E.

Arnav Navghare: All goes to the stair and stairs, and we sit all together, and our counselor usually plays games with us about friendships, and gives us scenarios and tells us how we could react positively or negatively

Arnav Navghare: about how does to be a better friend and stuff like that? So they kind of prepare us on

Arnav Navghare: like even in lower grades. They also have an assembly. They just don't call us for being talk, but they also the counselors there. They also teach them the same thing, that they teach us just how to be a better friend, and how to make friends, and to resolve conflicts in a good way, and not with like a physical or an argument.

Arnav Navghare: One other thing is that in our like homeroom or advisory classes we have a thing it's called character. Strong might have heard of it.

Arnav Navghare: and it's like they talk to us also about tips that we can use to like, make better friends or socialize better. And that's kind of the reason why we started the friendly guides. It was to

Arnav Navghare: help other or younger peers of us.

Scott Jamieson: That sounds awesome, and I am excited to hear that you've got these opportunities at school to be learning some things that aren't just all about kind of our core curriculum. We think about language and math and science, but really kind of developing as human beings. And I think that's so important in school, and that kind of leads me to my next question.

Scott Jamieson: What drew the 4 of you to be part of Compassion Club in the middle school. What was your motivation to say? Hey, I want to check this out.

Arnav Navghare: Okay? So during our scorpion talk, we another group gave a presentation about scorpion talk which immediately drew my attention when they said, they'll be making like, we'll be doing like fundraisers and events. Okay, coming together forming groups to do certain stuff.

Arnav Navghare: Okay? So then, when I was there. I'll spread like, spread the word. Some did not want to do it, some did, and then dropped out. But then then I found them okay, they were really engaged. They they actually wants to join with me. And so I was like, Okay, hey, let's be a group. And let's do all these things together.

Arnav Navghare: For me. It was like one of my teachers. She recommended me this. And I was like, Okay, yeah, sure. And she told me that it was all about like making events

Arnav Navghare: and

Arnav Navghare: doing like fun stuff that other people can enjoy.

Arnav Navghare: So I was really happy to join that. And then that turned into what now this is our compassion, action, plan B.

Arnav Navghare: And lastly, for me. It was that I have realized that I've not been very like nice people and compassionate. So I wanted to build like my compassionate. So later on, in real life, I can be more of a compassion person.

Arnav Navghare: So that's why I joined Compassion Club, and the second reason was cause of my mom. She told me that this Compassion Club could really help you cause my mom has experienced her ups and downs with like

Arnav Navghare: being compassionate, being nice to people, how to be respectful

Arnav Navghare: and like spreading love, and to all other people. So she told me that this would be really good for you and for benefit you later on in your life. So those are the 2 reasons why I really considered joining Compassion Club. Thank you.

Arnav Navghare: So I joined Compassion Club because I, my grandma, came to visit me here in Saudi, and I was telling her about what happened in school today, and I was talking to her about Compassion Club, and she was like, Oh, it's really nice! I when I was younger. I didn't have something. I wish I had something like that. She's like you should really join it. I think it would help you along. So then I just signed up and yeah.

Scott Jamieson: Thank you all for sharing your personal connections, and some of that was a family connection or something you've just been drawn to. But I just wanna say, thank you. It's it's so amazing to see young people stepping up

Scott Jamieson: and taking on some extra responsibility to really build a positive culture at your school, and it's so inspiring to see that a lot of times when you know people think about teenagers, they think of people who are, you know, addicted to their phones, and they don't really care. They're not really engaged. And in my experience that's absolutely not true.

Scott Jamieson: I am so lucky and so grateful to get a chance to meet young people like you, who are engaged, and do care and want to do something positive in their school community. And it's so inspiring to hear how you kind of came together as a group and are able to kind of take action with the friendly guides, and think about how you can make a positive impact in your school community.

Scott Jamieson: I wanna circle around to your workshops with Iv.

Scott Jamieson: can you tell me about something that you took away from those workshops. It was really impactful for you, and just a little bit about the workshops in general. But what was something that you found really engaging or really meaningful, or really important.

Arnav Navghare: So what I picked up from this Ivn sessions is that you can like give kindness. You may may not receive it now.

Arnav Navghare: but you will really receive it like later on.

Scott Jamieson: So what?

Arnav Navghare: Kindness is probably the core of is kindness is the core

Arnav Navghare: also of crashing club.

Arnav Navghare: Okay, being kind in general.

Arnav Navghare: So that's why it was.

Scott Jamieson: This.

Arnav Navghare: My mission to just spread kindness, because now this really has changed.

Scott Jamieson: It wasn't like this.

Arnav Navghare: Hi! Now the blue and I was just hopping

Arnav Navghare: so. Habit I can confirm. That's very true.

Arnav Navghare: And one of Miss Ivs, like my very 1st time joining Miss Iv. Like meeting sessions was like. She talks about us getting a plans, and every day we should water it. So in my like personal view, I saw that I must bring myself right now as a seed, and for, like watering it.

Arnav Navghare: I would put it as like spreading compassions, being nice to people in order to build like that into. So it sprouts. And

Arnav Navghare: that that's how like, I'm so confident and very compassionate. And yeah.

Scott Jamieson: Anything else. So you guys to think about from your workshops you'd like to share

Scott Jamieson: Ornam or Louie.

Scott Jamieson: I think

Scott Jamieson: I think that's.

Arnav Navghare: Sam metaphor that all the animals?

Arnav Navghare: Yeah, because it's like you have to

Arnav Navghare: like consistently.

Arnav Navghare: Be nice. You can't just be nice once, and then that'll pay off. That's for, like your entire life, you have to continuously keep watering that thing you have to.

Scott Jamieson: That is so true, and I mean I work together all the time, and she has such a deep connection to nature. So I am not surprised here that she used the plant analogy. And I think you're absolutely right. This is something we have to nurture.

Scott Jamieson: Right? That's something we have to kind of focus on if we want to grow. And I wanna zoom in on something something like Lonnie said about kind of that personal growth that you've had to this experience. So I wonder if you might want to share a story of

Scott Jamieson: kind of your personal growth when it comes to compassion, or maybe share a community story. And the impact you've seen in your school community as a result of some of your work with Compassion Club.

Scott Jamieson: So it could be a personal story, or it could be a community story of the impact we're seeing from this work.

Arnav Navghare: So I can make an example. How? Okay? I'm new to this school. I just came, I just I completely new.

Arnav Navghare: So it's only my 1st year here here, and I wasn't really fond of everything. Okay, I was a quiet person. I'm not gonna lie to you. I was a really quiet person I kept to myself.

Arnav Navghare: I wasn't like

Arnav Navghare: extra wording, you would say so.

Arnav Navghare: When I walked with the moment I walked into class. Okay, every all eyes are on me. Okay, I was really shy. I was really scared. 1st thing I had to do was introduce myself, and that was not the best part.

Arnav Navghare: Okay, I did receive a few. Lafit's here and there, but

Arnav Navghare: it does not really bother me too much.

Arnav Navghare: So when I took a seat, I had to take a seat with these other 2 girls. I'm not gonna see their names. But one of them came to me. She was like she immediately communicated. She was like, Hi! What's your name? I hear you both. And so I was like.

Arnav Navghare: think I continue the conversation, and right there and then I just felt relaxed and comfortable

Arnav Navghare: in case I knew that

Arnav Navghare: if I stuck with her for a while I'd

Arnav Navghare: you know what's coming up there?

Arnav Navghare: Yeah.

Arnav Navghare: And for me.

Arnav Navghare: Like it was like

Arnav Navghare: in the week where we had a lot of tests, lot of projects do. And I really had no motivations. But then, like the next day, I come to school, there's these funny posters about like.

Arnav Navghare: how is like only this amount of like 10 weeks left. Come on. You can do us and one like lot of memes that were like motivational and spring kindness, and that really

Arnav Navghare: that put me up and

Arnav Navghare: got to that week, and now the rest of the weeks are all rest and

Arnav Navghare: so I don't have anything by being new cause. I've been in the school for like

Arnav Navghare: so long I can't even remember.

Arnav Navghare: So

Arnav Navghare: I've already received

Arnav Navghare: Free Zeke.

Arnav Navghare: I was in

Arnav Navghare: KD. One.

Arnav Navghare: and

Arnav Navghare: I don't remember anything.

Scott Jamieson: Alright! What if we take the helicopter up? But I imagine we're gonna kind of go way up to higher, higher altitude and think about kind of the big picture here.

Scott Jamieson: Why is compassion so important at a school?

Scott Jamieson: What's the big? Why, why is this needed in our school community

Scott Jamieson: so.

Arnav Navghare: There are many clubs in school and student council. I'm gonna use student council an example. It only focuses on events and stuff like that. But Compassion Club. We're focusing on like bringing people together, forming friendships. Yeah, kindness.

Arnav Navghare: He just said, yeah, the thing.

Arnav Navghare: So a lot of fun words that mean a lot to everybody, and we just want to spread that.

Arnav Navghare: And a Compassion club was important, because.

Arnav Navghare: honestly, to my knowledge, I don't think there's another club that does it as much as us. But they definitely do spread compassion, kindness.

Arnav Navghare: And yeah.

Arnav Navghare: so another important thing about Compassion Club is that not many people understand the value of being in this club like they do not understand how important it is to have this compassion in you

Arnav Navghare: like being kindness should be a habit

Arnav Navghare: like not being mean, because kindness is just my main focus in compassion club.

Arnav Navghare: But yeah, being kind is just

Arnav Navghare: really, really important. And for people not to know what the benefits of kindness is just not good.

Arnav Navghare: That's why Compassion Club. That would. That's why you have a club in School

Arnav Navghare: Compassion Club

Arnav Navghare: to kind of bring people together as one to explain all of that and just spread the word.

Arnav Navghare: That's why it's really, really.

Scott Jamieson: I think that sounds so amazing. And I agree, I think this is such an important ingredient in school culture, and how we can kind of create that sense of belonging. So people are excited to come into school, and we just feel that

Scott Jamieson: positive energy when we soon as we walk in the building.

Scott Jamieson: and I think the work that you are doing has such a big impact on that. And I'm really inspired by it.

Scott Jamieson: I wonder there's a lot of people, probably listening. Some of them are teachers, some of them are students who are thinking.

Scott Jamieson: man.

Scott Jamieson: I wish we had a compassion Club at our school

Scott Jamieson: and probably feel a little inspired about this work you're doing.

Scott Jamieson: What would be some advice you might give to students or teachers who are looking to get something like this started at their school.

Arnav Navghare: So I think we should just like

Arnav Navghare: see a few people and ask them, do you think you'd be interested in joining a club? That would be about kindness and being compassionate and like things like that.

Arnav Navghare: And just 1st

Arnav Navghare: get a few people that are interested.

Arnav Navghare: and then try to expand it

Arnav Navghare: into a way that it could become a club that is so like for our club. For Compassion Club. It was really dead at a point, and then we tried to like, re revive it by going to our scorpion talks and presenting to the students and telling them

Arnav Navghare: we are what our club is, and they've kinda

Arnav Navghare: that's how most of us got into compassion. Hope

Arnav Navghare: that's T.

Arnav Navghare: She saw the presentation and was like, Oh, I want to join this. So I think either you should do the same thing or students.

Arnav Navghare: So yeah, like, Lily said, Compassion club press. It was actually really small. I think it only had about 2 people.

Arnav Navghare: and I think for someone who might not have a club. They should definitely like.

Arnav Navghare: get in touch with a teacher and try and start a club because a club that focus on fashion is really good, and my dad says this a lot. But he says, don't be a follower, be a leader, and I think that means a lot, because you have. If you want to start something, do start it don't just follow. If it's if it's already there. You have to change something.

Arnav Navghare: and like you don't really need to start a whole entire club. It can just start by

Arnav Navghare: writing like nice things to say, posting them on getting them on a stick note, posting them on any lockers, giving it to people.

Arnav Navghare: complimenting people, holding the door for people that we don't need like a club to do that. It could just be like some basic things you can do to like show, like some compassion to other people and like.

Arnav Navghare: maybe you can like, if you start like a whole community doing that, you can even create a whole entire club and start doing these things of

Arnav Navghare: what we do in Compassion Club. And

Arnav Navghare: so actually, at our school for a character strong, one of the sides are like they're called care bears. So it's like a bear where

Arnav Navghare: this week, or try to write a compliment on a sticky note and put it on someone's store, someone's classroom or their locker

Arnav Navghare: and or hold someone as to hold the door for someone and ask for their names.

Arnav Navghare: Just try to get the people like Get to know the people you don't really know in your middle school. So that's being character strong, does. And yeah.

Scott Jamieson: I love that such great advice. Thank you so much.

Scott Jamieson: you know, from small acts of kindness to Arnav's dad, who thinks we should be leaders. I 100% agree with great advice. And I think there's a lot of opportunity in school. We take advantage of it to be leaders and to kind of showcase. This kind of work. And Viago is saying, it's it's little things, right, little things that we can do so easily.

Scott Jamieson: And oftentimes we don't realize how big an impact that can have. You know you do something nice for somebody. Maybe they're having a really bad day, and you don't know. And then, all of a sudden, or the blue, someone does something nicer is kind to them that can make such a huge difference in people's day.

Scott Jamieson: And it's so amazing to hear you talk about just these little things that we can do as a community to really think about our wellbeing and our happiness. And all these things that go into, you know, just being positive.

Scott Jamieson: So I really appreciate that.

Scott Jamieson: What are some aspirations you have for the friendly guides we're coming up to the end of the school year, thinking about next year, thinking ahead, what is the things you'd like to do in terms of growing your impact with the friendly guides.

Arnav Navghare: I want to do some research on maybe higher grade levels. So that way.

Arnav Navghare: people that are in the middle school. Maybe we could do a presentation with just the middle school or ourselves on like how we could benefit each other in high school

Arnav Navghare: right now we're looking to do another conference with

Arnav Navghare: 4th or 5th grade.

Arnav Navghare: So with like adding on to Arnold.

Arnav Navghare: Middle school is the hardest group to manage, because they just

Arnav Navghare: take this information and

Arnav Navghare: throw it away later on. So we just need this to stick into the Headset Compassion Club.

Arnav Navghare: Really, it's make it holds a big impact. Okay, throughout all your years, and if they can just hold it with them. Okay, just this compassion feeling with them throughout all their school years.

Arnav Navghare: I promise you. Not a big combatant club will be needed. Okay, but it is really important that it continues and that it never dies, and that we will make we'll make sure that

Arnav Navghare: this cup stays alive for as long as they can, because they are a lot of schools that do not have this opportunity to experience everything that we're experiencing right now. Okay, coming together holding these events. Okay, so

Arnav Navghare: I think it's really important that we get to these harder. Groups that aren't, that are really hard to manage, and that we just somehow make a way for them to stick. So

Arnav Navghare: towards the end of the year, I just really hope that maybe we can collect data. Okay, survey, maybe on for us. How has Compassion Club really changed us? Okay? And then we can just display out there in middle school, and maybe hand out flyers and try and convince people to hey join.

Arnav Navghare: It's not that bad. It's really it's really a good benefit. Yeah, benefit.

Scott Jamieson: Beautiful. I think that sounds amazing thinking about you know how we might connect back with our audience. And you're right. Middle school can be a tough crowd sometimes. But you know, how do we hook more people in? How do we think about our impact? And the beautiful thing about kindness is, you know, you're, you know, being kind to someone, you feel good. They feel good. And it really is contagious. And we can really kind of

Scott Jamieson: have such a positive impact there

Scott Jamieson: telling Lennyago, Lily and Arna. Thank you so much for being such amazing podcast guests and for sharing your story with our listeners. I hope this inspires other people who are listening to

Scott Jamieson: be kind in their school community, and maybe even get organized and be leaders and start a compassion club at their school to have that positive impact on their school culture. I just think it's absolutely amazing work. And I wanna say, thank you. On behalf of your school community and all the people you're impacting through this work. I think it is so awesome to see young people taking this on as leaders. So thank you very much for joining me today.

Scott Jamieson: Thank you.

Arnav Navghare: Thank you for having us here.

Scott Jamieson: Alright, we're gonna kick the button.