[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1651780712457{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Recently, we invited some of our students at the Children’s Academy to write about a value that is important to them. In this short piece, Dyouly talks about compassion, what it means to her, and what she learns about it at the Children’s Academy.

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My name is Dyouly. I am Haitian. I am 13 thirteen years old and I am in 7th grade at The Children’s Academy which is located in the mountains of Haiti, in a small community called Bawosya.

At my school we have a particular value that we focus on each month. We reflect on it together and work to better understand how to live it out.

Today I want to share with you lessons that I’ve been learning about compassion. What is compassion? Compassion is when we have empathy for another person, when we take time to understand them and what they’re going through. For example, if someone has a problem you try to help that person to solve their problem, whatever the difficulty they’re confronting may be.

I learn a lot of things about compassion at my school. The way that the school works with parents of students and with us children, we are treated with compassion. This helps me to understand how I should be compassionate with other children at my school and in my community. This has led me to not want to see people suffer. I feel the need to help someone if they’re having a problem. If one of my classmates doesn’t have a pen or pencil or notebook, I loan him one as I normally have several. Sometimes other classmates didn’t bring a packed lunch so I share my lunch with them.

These are the types of things that I’ve learned at my school about how to practice compassion for my classmates.

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