Twenty One Toys The Empathy Toy®

The Empathy Toy® is a multi-award winning educational tool used by 1000s of educators, coaches, and teams.

Available

The Empathy Toy® Facilitator's Kit

This kit is perfect for facilitators, people managers, and post-secondary educators.

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Available

The Empathy Toy® Teacher's Kit

This kit is perfect for teachers, youth programming managers, and anyone working with young people.

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Eileen Kennedy,
Economic Development Officer and Film Liaison
Regional Municipality of Durham

"I appreciated the insightful, playful and creative exercise and know it will be helpful in my work and personal relationships. Thank you for facilitating."

Learn about our Empathy Toy® Global Play Sessions
 
 

Empathy Toy® on CBC TV

Learning 21st-century skills by playing games—and how the Empathy Toy® is being embraced by everyone from students to CEOs—takes centre stage on CBC’s Our Toronto with Marivel Taruc.

 
 

How the Game Works

Meet the Empathy Toy®! Each toy piece has a different shape and texture. One player starts with a pattern of assembled puzzle pieces, and everyone works together to recreate the same shape with the matching pieces! But wait – there's an unexpected challenge…

 
 

Empathy Toy® Origin Story

It all started as a student project with a very specific assignment: design a navigational aid for the blind. Discover the history of the Empathy Toy® in this early-days TEDx Talk from Twenty One Toys Founder and Empathy Toy® Inventor, Ilana Ben-Ari.

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“Toys are the New Textbooks”

Inspired by Friedrich Froebel's original Kindergarten blocks, we're reimagining toys as tools for the 21st century. The Empathy Toy® is our first in a new line of toys teaching 21st-century skills in classrooms and boardrooms around the world.

HuffPost
on Twenty One Toys

“Both what we learn and how we learn needs to change from what we did in the past. Instead of believing things like reading, writing, and arithmetic are the top job skills we should teach our students skills like creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking in order to prepare them to be innovative workers and live satisfying lives.”

  • TIME Magazine
    September 2014

    “One of six new technologies shaping classrooms of the future…”

  • Amanda Lang
    Anchor, BNN Bloomberg,
    Bestselling author of The Beauty of Discomfort

    “[The Empathy Toys] don't just develop empathy - they also foster resilience, collaboration, and creativity.”

Pasi Sahlberg
Director-General, Finland’s Ministry of Education, author: Finnish Lessons 2.0

“Toys that help kids become global leaders: The Empathy Toy is my favorite.”

Ideal for use at School in 1 Classroom

The Empathy Toy® Teacher's Kit

Teachers and students alike are embracing toys and play as powerful tools to develop empathic leadership. As education moves from a transfer of information to collaborative participation, the Empathy Toy is being used in thousands of classrooms around the world to help students practice this critical 21st-century skill. You'll find the Empathy Toy in the Chinese University of Hong Kong Executive MBA Program and in every public school in Milwaukee. Students are playing and learning in Geneva, Switzerland and Nairobi, Kenya, in Melbourne, Australia and Winnipeg, Canada. No matter the classroom, the students playing, the language being spoken, or the grade level, the Empathy Toy is changing what learning looks like.

A Teacher's Kit is ideal for one classroom of up to 20 students from K-12. It comes with a guidebook with over 52 ways to play to help students of all ages to apply and refine empathy in four domains: Creative Dialogue, Teamwork & Collaboration, Autonomous Learning, and Making Connections. Whether you're covering analogy in a language class or collaborative problem-solving in a design class, we've outlined discussion questions, game designs, and ways to measure growth for dozens of different games.

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Brian Bowman,
Mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

“One of the reasons why we’re so excited is [St. John's High School] had a huge reduction in bullying [an 85% drop in conflict-based office referrals] as a result of Empathy Toys and it demonstrates in real terms that it can make a real impact on changing people’s behaviour."

Michael Cassidy,
Associate Dean, Continuing Education, Sheridan College, 2014-2017

“The Empathy Toy is the ultimate enabler for transitioning away from past education models of information consumption towards innovation and experiential participation.”

For Teams of 3–20 to use at work

The Empathy Toy® Facilitator's Kit

Empathy is being recognized as the #1 job skill, so it's no surprise that hundreds of HR Departments, Training and Development Teams, and Managers are bringing the Empathy Toy to work! The Empathy Toy proves that play and work are not opposites and that empathy helps teams collaborate better, and achieve better results. You'll find the Empathy Toy in small start-ups and multi-national companies, played by teams in finance, tech, retail, and healthcare. Organizations are making time to play in Auckland, New Zealand and San Francisco, USA, in Seoul, South Korea and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Regardless of industry, job function, seniority, or team size, the Empathy Toy is helping businesses remain competitive in the 21st century.

An Empathy Toy Facilitator's Kit is ideal for teams who have less than 20 members and at least one person who is comfortable leading a facilitated conversation. It comes with everything you need to play as well as a guidebook to help you integrate the toy into existing programs. The guidebook outlines discussion questions, game designs, and a number of possible themes that you can explore with the Empathy Toy.

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Tara John
Head of Talent, Inclusion & Learning
Bank of Montreal

“I have seen first hand the powerful impact the Empathy Toy has had on our leaders at the Bank of Montreal."