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This paper presents an overview of an empathy education project that aims to increase young people’s capacity to demonstrate empathy and engage in prosocial behaviour in their peer groups and communities. The project originated at the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre in Ireland and involves an educational programme called Activating Social Empathy (ASE). The current phase of the project aims to adapt the ASE programme for implementation in post-conflict settings beyond Europe. A key aim of this phase is to ensure that the programme’s content and pedagogy are adapted through a framework of cultural and conflict sensitivity. Empathy has been broadly defined as understanding and sharing the perspectives of others. Our conceptualisation of empathy goes further than this and includes a compulsion to act to support others, particularly those who are oppressed. It is inspired by Elizabeth Segal's model of empathy that promotes social justice. The ASE programme uses participatory, student-centred pedagogy to support students to integrate empathic actions in their own lives. Two phases of research have been undertaken on the programme. The research sought to explore what the outcomes were for students taking the programmme and what factors influenced the implementation of the programme by teachers. The methodologies used were a quantitative randomised control trial followed by a qualitative interview-based study. The quantitative findings showed increases in empathy, social responsibility values, emotional self-confidence and helping and defending behaviours among participants, while the qualitative findings showed that contextual factors and relationships strongly influenced the programme’s implementation. The current phase of the project draws on these findings in adapting the programme for post-conflict settings, with a focus on the importance of context in programme implementation. To this end, the adaptation phase will involve co-creation with educational actors who are embedded in the local context.