In 2015, a group of students in a university were given the assignment to become sellers in traditional markets. The students were quite shocked, they never pictured themselves to sit in a small stall and sell things. It was not their usual scenery. But that’s the goal of the assignment, to get the students to understand the world from another perspective. The students were also told to identify the challenges faced by the seller in traditional markets. If they can identify the challenges, it is possible to have them find the right solution. Though the assignment had raised various reactions from the students, the outcomes were interesting.
Some students testified to have “changed their perspective” about sellers in traditional markets. One student, for example, used to think some people became sellers in traditional markets because they are not exposed to do anything else in life. “I assumed that the sellers did not have motivation careerwise, so they only spend their time sitting in their stalls and wait for customers to buy things from them,” he added.
The reality? Turns out he learned that it’s 180 degrees from his assumptions. Sellers in traditional markets have to get up around 2 or 3 AM in the morning, every day, to get freshly picked goods from the main market. If they were just minutes late, they will get the least fresh, and it could have an impact on their daily income. Another student identified that the sellers had to sell all of the goods before the sun sets high. Some vegetables withered if it’s left in the open air for too long.
There are more findings identified by the students for this assignment but the point is: they can tell their story, they can have their own perspective because they have felt what the sellers feel. Most of the time, we could be wrong about something unless we try to see and understand what is it like from the other side. To our understanding, this is the first step to have one’s empathy triggered.
Empathy is, probably, one of the words that we say a lot in our delivered programs. It is a core aspect that we believe can be powerful if every individual practised it regularly. Imagine if the students continue to figure out what can they do to ease the challenges that the sellers faced from day-to-day. Imagine how many solutions that can be made. Imagine if, this concept is being applied in our everyday lives, dare we say, we won’t run out of solutions!
Everyone can be the change if they wish to be. One of the ways that we try to enable people from realizing that is through Three-S Network: Empathy Series. The program aims to share the importance of having empathy and the application of empathy in our personal and professional matters.
credit: SociopreneurID
The sessions will be delivered every Saturday from 10 AM – 12 PM GMT/UTC +7 from August – September 2020. Three-S Network: Empathy Series will be presented by our subject-matter experts, Donni Hadi Waluyo and Her Suharyanto. They will guide the participants to break down empathy in six sessions. Three-S Network: Empathy Series is open for the public and it’s free of charge. All sessions are presented in Bahasa.
Meet the Speakers!
Donni Hadi Waluyo
Donni is a psychology scientist, researcher, trainer, and executive life coach. He holds a Psychology degree and a Master of Psychology from Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. He is now a faculty member of Bank Indonesia Institute and a subject-matter expert at SociopreneurID.
Donni is the first Indonesian to be honoured the Trainer Certified Professional Points of You Coaching Game (as of March 2017) from Points of You International in Japan.
Her Suharyanto
Her has more than 30 years of experience as a journalist in many well-known media in Indonesia.
Besides having written thousands of straight news and hundreds of features, he has also written several popular biographies and books, several books written in under his name, and many other books written for others in ghost-writing schemes.
Currently, Her is still providing training in journalism, photography and popular writing for various institutions. He is also a subject-matter expert at SociopreneurID.
For more information about Three-S, kindly visit our website. Click on this link to access all sessions of Three-S Network: Empathy Series.
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