Listening, being empathetic helps us be more kind. Video for Haiti.

1. SHOWING KINDNESS &
RESPECT
February Character Education 2017

2. LearningTarget
• I can show kindness to others by
• Being empathetic
• Listening
• Being more accepting
• Respecting differences
• Doing random acts of kindness for others

3. Being empathetic means…
• Getting outside of yourself!
• Have you ever been in a place with hundreds or thousands of people?
• Have you ever traveled to another country?
• Have you ever been on an airplane and looked down to see big cities and
landmasses?
• Have you ever realized how many people are in our state, our country, or our
world?

4. Time to Reflect… and share!
• There is a reason I ask these questions. Have you ever thought to yourself…
• “What makes my beliefs, my opinions, my experiences, my perspective right, but
other peoples’ wrong?”
• “Is my thinking the only way, or are there other ways to perceive things?”
• “Am I open to hearing what other people think and believe?”
• “Is my life any more important than someone else’s?”
• “What kinds of things contribute to my life experiences, opinions, beliefs?”
• “How might mine be different from other people?”

5. Being empathetic…
• Means trying to understand what it is like in someone else’s shoes. One of the best
ways to be empathetic is to listen and learn. It’s very difficult when you have not
experienced something yourself, but you can try to imagine what it might be like.
• When you learn about different cultures, ideas, belief systems, experiences… you
can better understand why people do, say, behave the way they do.
• This helps us be more kind to people – knowing that we don’t know what types of
situations they have seen, lived, or experienced. Their life is very different from
yours.

6. For example: Let’s learn about Haiti
• Learning about culture and other people can help us be more empathetic and
more kind… especially as we take on Hearts for Haiti
• When France occupied Haiti in the 1800s, the colonists built Fort Dimanche along
Port-Au-Prince Bay.The fort was converted into a prison in the 20th century by the
brutal president François Duvalier, who crammed political opponents into 12
square foot cages and subjected them to torturous conditions, resulting in 3,000
deaths. Since being converted into a national monument in 1987, however, the
story of Fort Dimanche has become no less grim.

8. Cookies made from mud…
• Today, the area surrounding the fort is filled with vendors selling dirt cookies, a
circular morsel of hardened clay, locally known as Bon BonTè. Haiti is one of the
poorest nations in theWestern Hemisphere, and food prices continue to
skyrocket. In the slums the situation is so dire that one of the major sources of
food are these cookies made from mud.

9. Fort Dimanche
• While the process of making dirt cookies takes place all throughout the city’s
slums, one of the main epicenters is the area surrounding Fort Dimanche.Vendors
line street after street, carrying large canisters of dirt to the streetside, where they
mix salty water with the clay.The cookies are then patted down into small circles
and left to dry in the sun before being sold to local families living around Fort
Dimanche, who use them to temporarily stave off their children’s hunger.

10. NutritionalValue?
• Unfortunately, the health impacts of Bon BonTè are disturbing to many of the
nutritionists of the region. Although some people believe that the dirt is rich in
vitamins and minerals, in reality the cookies provide little to no nutritional value,
and worse, can be contaminated.

12. Donate to Hearts for Haiti!
• This is a great opportunity to get outside of yourself and donate school supplies or
money to help the children of Haiti.
• Any amount helps! Bring your spare change… share your gently used supplies!!!