Project Empathic

How Two Students Decided to Fight Hopelessness with Empathy

AUTHOR: UDHAY SOKHI

It was the summer of 2021; Vancouver was still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 24-hour news cycle was opening our eyes to troubling social issues plaguing both our communty and the world at large. It was in the height of this weighty and scorching summer, that Janelle Tam and Kaitlyn Liu, two LFA students on the cusp of entering the 11th grade, decided they had had enough. Not of the pandemic or the important issues mind you, but of the prevading sense of hopelessness. The presiding sentiment that the world was in bad shape, and there was nothing we could really do about it - that we had to just sit and wait for it to all blow over...whenever that would be.

This did not sit right with Janelle and Kaitlyn, so they started brainstorming how they could make a difference. In doing research, they stumbled upon the issue of homelessness. Homelessness was an issue rampant in the Lower Mainland, and more importantly perhaps, it was an issue they felt they hadn't heard or learned nearly enough about.

The next step for these two enterprsing young women was even more research. If they wanted to make a meaningful contribution towards supporting victims of homelessness, they needed to understand firsthand how it affected people. Janelle and Kaitlyn began reaching out to various homeless shelters and foundations and began having important dialogues with individuals who had lived experiences of homelessness.

This preliminary step not only helped inform the girls of the magnitude of homelessness as a societal issue, but it helped generate a meaningful framework for how Janelle and Kaitlyn could make a difference.

With the mentorship of LFA's own, Ms.Harrison and Owen Fan, the Director of Operations at Learning Buddies Network, a local non-profit, Janelle and Kaitlyn were able to formulate the main concept of Project Empathic. Through their many conversations with shelters and individuals with lived experiences, something that struck both Janelle and Kaitlyn was the incredible isolation many unhoused people feel at specific times of the year.

This feeling of isolation is not only caused by the experience of being unhoused, but society's general apathy towards the issue of homelessness; many unhoused people expressed how they often feel invisible to passersby. This resonated with Janelle and Kaitlyn, and they were confident it would resonate with their peers as well; the feeling of being seen or unseen was not uncommon amongst their age group. With this, the idea dawned on them that they could create a little light in the life of unhoused folks by commissioning fellow students to write and create greeting cards for them, particularly around holidays like Christmas and Valentine's Day.

The girls weren’t satisfied with just that however.Over the course of their research Janelle and Kaitlyn realized how much their empathy for the issue of homelessness was informed by their deeper understanding of it. The more the girls learned, the more important it became to do something. Knowledge as a driver of empathy was an important revelation for them, and they realized it was important to spur it in their peers and society at large. Thus, in tandem to commissions for greeting cards, Janelle and Kaitlyn decided they would also host workshops to teach fellow students about homelessness. In particular, their aim was to shed light on how homelessness is a societal issue rather than an individual one – it is not in fact brought on by people unto themselves but is a symptom of socio-economic inequality.

Project Empathic would thus be a fully realized concept, committed to making a positive impact on the lives of unhoused people today, while simultaneously generating empathy through knowledge on the issue of homelessness itself. A project at once interested in making an immediate impact, while creating a pathway for greater change in the future.

As of today, Project Empathic has collected over 500 greeting cards and delivered six workshops in total in collaboration with the following organizations:

- Errington Clubhouse

- Ferris Clubhouse

- Grauer Clubhouse

- Jessie Wowk Clubhouse

- McKinney Clubhouse

- MacCorkindale Clubhouse

- Spul’u’kwuks Clubhouse

- Westwind Clubhouse

- Connections Kids Club

- Maple Grove Elementary School

- St. Augustine School

- St. Jude Elementary School

- Little Flower Academy

Watching the community take to Project Empathic the way it has, has been overwhelming for Janelle and Kaitlyn to say the least. Janelle describes it as “one of the best experiences of [her] life.” Not only seeing the heaps of cards produced, but reading the beautiful sentiments and words of encouragement inside them has filled the girls with immense gratitude and joy.

When asked what they hoped to accomplish with Project Empathic, Janelle expressed, more than anything, wanting to inspire a sense of empathy in people. In destigmatizing homelessness, Janelle and Kaitlyn hoped to get children to start thinking about the issue in a different way and to subsequently go home and engage their parents about it as well. In doing so, Janelle and Kaitlyn hoped to spark thoughtful family discussions about homelessness - discussions that would encourage parents to think critically about the root causes of homelessness and try to better understand how we as a society can help tackle the issue.

Ultimately, homelessness is not an issue any one individual feels responsibility for, unlike littering for example, it can thus be difficult understanding what part we can or should play in combatting it. Therein lies the apathy and lack of momentum for an issue like homelessness. By starting Project Empathic, Janelle and Kaitlyn hoped to educate people to the point of being personally invested in the matter – after all, a societal issue like homelessness requires a society to help address it.

What exactly makes homelessness a societal issue you ask? Janelle and Kaitlyn were quick to answer. It boils down to three main ideas: income inequality, discontinuation of social programs, and criminalization. Increased income inequality throughout the 21st century has pushed more and more people out of their homes. The stark disparity of a living wage and the current minimum wage in BC has rendered situations whereby hard-working citizens are forced to choose between feeding themselves or putting a roof over their heads. The simultaneous discontinuation of social programs that provide affordable housing and aid low-income individuals has meant the elimination of the few safety nets these people had. Finally, further exacerbating the situation are discriminatory laws towards unhoused individuals. Laws preventing people from sleeping on benches, and other harshly imposed measurements simply add fuel to the fire, making it virtually impossible for someone who finds themselves unhoused to subsist and emerge from their situation. These combined factors in essence create and perpetuate the vicious cycle of homelessness.

So, what’s next for Project Empathic? Janelle and Kaitlyn hope to expand their reach by partnering with more schools. This will not only mean more volunteers making more cards, but it will also mean the opportunity to get to host more workshops and educate more students about issues surrounding homelessness. As Project Empathic grows, Janelle and Kaitlyn also hope to introduce more specific workshops, moving from bringing awareness to homelessness as an issue to tackling more specific subject matter within. They also hope to learn a lot more themselves and begin formulating more tangible solutions to homelessness; they hope to move from diagnosing the problem to taking active steps to remedying it.

We are incredibly inspired by the enormous empathy and steadfast determination Janelle and Kaitlyn have displayed in stewarding Project Empathic. The girls have already made an enormous contribution to enriching the lives of unhoused people while raising awareness of homelessness and fostering empathy. Project Empathic is a testament to the great minds and even greater hearts of Janelle Tam and Kaitlyn Liu. We couldn’t be more proud!