Poverty Simulation

Long time no see!

On Monday, I worked late to help staff a poverty simulation in conjunction with Miami Hamilton's "STAY-cation." My friend Jessica Reading (a VISTA at MUH) led this initiative, designed to give students the opportunity to learn about poverty and serve their communities during the school's spring break.

The simulation lasts one hour and is based on real situations that people in poverty experience during the course of a typical month, which is divided up into 15-minute "weeks." Participants are grouped into "families" and each person has a role to play, from a child attending school to an adult going to work and securing benefits. As a "staffer" in the simulation, I played the teacher. My job was to make sure the students stayed in school for 7 minutes each "week" and that they completed their homework (quizzes on poverty statistics). I also had to hand out cards requesting that their parents send the students back with money for school supplies, art projects, and field trips. By the end of the simulation, only half of the students had brought back enough money to cover these costs. I found this part of the simulation a bit ironic, especially in light of my newest project to raise money with the Butler County School Supply Coalition. For me, it made our mission to purchase school supplies for low-income students that much more serious.

Here I am, waiting for my students to arrive at school!

Many families were "evicted" from their houses for not paying their rent. Turns out, these were illegal evictions, but the families were so consumed with meeting their basic needs that no one fought the legality of the situation.

I think the poverty simulation is a good exercise in exploring the issues that many people in poverty face: living paycheck to paycheck, meeting transportation needs, balancing family and work and benefits. But it's important to keep a couple of things in mind. First, this was a simulation and simulations aren't perfect. My background in disability studies has taught me that simulations aren't always the best educational tools because they tend to focus on only one or two aspects of reality, often the extremes, and can skew one's perception of the issue. Simulations can result in pity for the group whose experience is being simulated, which not only doesn't feel very good, but usually doesn't result in much action. In this case, though, the participants took time to debrief on the simulation, which was facilitated by OASHF. From what I could tell, many of the participants engaged in meaningful, quality reflection that focused on the issues of poverty, not just on "winning" the simulation. Overall, it was a good day and I hope that the participants came away with a deeper understanding of poverty that will result in future changes to policy to help people in poverty.

For more pictures and insight on the simulation, check out Alex's blog!

Even though this is the last weekend before my wedding (yikes!), I hope to post more updates from this past week, including victories and lessons learned from adventures in grant-seeking. Stay tuned!