Healthy Child Manitoba

Seeds of Empathy

Seeds of Empathy, created by Mary Gordon, is an adaptation of her Roots of Empathy  program. Seeds of Empathy is designed to foster social and emotional competence and early literacy skills for younger children, ages three to five years old. Like Roots of Empathy, Seeds of Empathy is designed to reduce physical aggression and bullying by fostering children’s empathy. The long term goal is to improve emotional health and social functioning. While Roots of Empathy is provided to kindergarten to grade 8 classrooms, Seeds of Empathy is aimed at the early childhood years to be implemented in child care facilities, nursery schools and Aboriginal Head Start programs. In both Roots and Seeds, the baby is the “teacher”. By becoming aware of the baby’s perspective and learning to label his or her feelings, children learn to understand their own feelings and to develop empathy.

For three to five year olds, the goals for Seeds of Empathy are to:

• Foster the development of empathy;
• Build social and emotional understanding;
• Reduce aggression and increase pro-social behaviour; and
• Develop positive attitudes toward competencies in early literacy.

For early childhood educators, the goals for Seeds of Empathy are to:

• Increase their knowledge base of early childhood development and skill sets in working with three-to-five year olds, with a specific emphasis on socio-emotional development; and
• Help them promote empathy in Early Childhood settings.
• Promote early literacy skills.

In 2009/10 early childhood centres, Aboriginal Head Start sites and nursery schools across Manitoba were invited to attend training to implement Seeds.  Under a randomized controlled trial, communities across Manitoba are implementing a two year process of staff training, program delivery and evaluation.

The province of Manitoba is collaborating with the Manitoba First Nations Educational Resource Centre (MFNERC) under a tripartite agreement with the federal government, MFNERC, and Healthy Child Manitoba (HCMO) to provide Seeds of Empathy to their communities.

Seeds of Empathy is an important component of Reclaiming Hope - Manitoba's Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy.

Visit the Seeds of Empathy website