Empathy Walk: A Stolen Childhood Hassan
Introduction : The Struggle To Find Purpose
Conducting this empathy walk task wasn’t an easy thing to do at all. At first , I had a lot of
confusion and doubt about how the empa
...
Empathy Walk: A Stolen Childhood Hassan
Introduction : The Struggle To Find Purpose
Conducting this empathy walk task wasn’t an easy thing to do at all. At first , I had a lot of
confusion and doubt about how the empathy walk will happen and who’s the person that I am
going to have a chat with and what topic might I discuss in our meeting. The purpose of the
assignment is to find someone who I don’t know at all and has a different world than the one I
have and make the person sit and chat with me for an hour or so yet how am I supposed to make to
participate in a spontaneous conversation while at the same time making it a memorable and a
meaningful one for me and the reader. This was a challenge that prompted me to have this deep
mental battle raging inside my head and it got me thinking ; what is the issue that I can discuss and
explore with someone that is prevalent in this world , and particularly in my home country ( Egypt)
? Since the core of this course is about ethics , the conversation that I am going to have with the
stranger has to address an important ethical issue that exists today and is still too common in
developing and third world countries. After much contemplation , I decided that this empathy walk
is going to be on child labor because it’s a problem that I know very little about and since I was
little , I remember seeing children in Egypt who were my age at the time or younger working as
cleaners , waiters , mechanics , barbers , and even drivers. Those bizarre images would always stir
my curiosity as I wonder why am I in school and not working like these children and when I ask
my parents the same question their answer would be that they are “ unfortunate” and I am one of
the lucky ones. In fact , if you live in Egypt, every day you will be confronted with these images of
small and young children with dirty and poor skinny faces collecting garbage and rummaging in it
to search for something to eat. Seeing children being hit and abused by their bosses or selling
tissue boxes and newspapers or toys during traffic jam is the usual thing there to the extent that
people forget the catastrophic consequences that concerns our communities and families
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