Note to the trainer: Strengthen participants’ ability to take perspective by helping them view events not through the window of institutional rules, but through the inner world of a disadvantaged child.
Method: Group work.
Materials: Worksheets and pens.
1. Starting the activity: The trainer divides the group into teams of four or five people. 2. “A One-Day Empathy Diary” activity: Each group receives the profile of an imaginary child living in the institution (for example, “An eight-year-old child who has recently arrived at the institution, cries constantly in the evenings and does not speak to anyone”). Groups are asked to take the child’s place (take the child’s perspective) and write a short diary page in the child’s voice entitled “My First Day in the Institution”. 3. Sharing: A spokesperson from each group reads the diary. The trainer emphasises how placing oneself in another person’s position (perspective-taking) supports the child’s need to be “seen and understood”.