Wrapping-up Week One: Our Exercise on Empathy

The fourth step in our WAGi Journey is “Walk in Other’s Shoes”. It aims to help kids understand the different stakeholders of a social problem so they can design solutions with them in mind. For instance, when trying to address a road-safety problem, we want them to realize that pedestrians, drivers, cyclists, and law enforcement may all be affected by both the problem and the solution. As such, their perspectives should be factored into identifying the problem and its root cause as well as designing an effective solution to it.

For our exercise, we asked our kids to come up to us to receive post-it notes that randomly assigned them to professions. These included a cab driver, businessman, nurse, doctor, police officer, priest, politician and teacher. They returned to their seats and placed the post-it notes in their journals–for the rest of the day, that profession was their identity.

Next, we asked them to imagine themselves as the only person who could help vulnerable people in scenarios we illustrated. In one example, we asked how each of them would help a little boy just broke his leg. The businessman offered to pay for his healthcare cost. The nurse and doctor said they would take care of him. The cab driver offered to drive him to the hospital to receive care. Until recently, emergency ambulance services were unavailable and/or unreliable in Ghana. Cabs were often used by the friends and family of the sick and injured to transport them to the hospital.

It was inspiring to see the kids step into their professional roles to help people in this exercise. Even more remarkable is watching them help each other out. Some students seem to grasp lessons and concepts faster than others. As such, they complete assignments faster than their peers. However, rather than idle around when they are done, they offer help to their classmates sitting next to them. This is the kind of leadership we want to encourage in them–helping others with one’s strengths so together you can all reach a desired goal.

In the future, we would improve this exercise to teach kids to help others by using their own resources, strengths and talents rather than those they assume an assigned profession offers them.