Poverty Simulation: Eye Opener and Idea Sparker

The Dean of Students Office and Diversity Advocacy put on a poverty simulation titled Many Faces of Poverty last night. A few friends and I went as we could get credit for some classes we were in but we were also very interested.

We had no hints going into the event what is was all about or what we would be doing so the anticipation was thick as we waited outside the door. Once we walked inside we saw little groups of chairs each with a different number of chairs. My friends and I chose a group with four chairs as there was four of us. We sat down and were told to look through our packet we were given. This packet told us what "family" we were and was full of our information, identification cards, transportation passes, and name tags.

My friends and I were the Morris family. I was Mike Morris and 3 years old, two of my friends were my "siblings", Melinda (8 years old) and Mark (13 years old). We had a single "father" (our fourth friend) named Miles, as he had just recently divorced from our "mother" and had full custody. The facilitators explained to us that we had to act our role for the rest of the simulation and all of the rules, our responsibilities, and exactly what we had to do. The main idea was to survive a month in poverty. Now, we weren't there for a month obviously so every 15 minutes was a week and we participated in four 15 minute intervals.

Our first "week:"

• My father and I dropped my brother and sister off at school. 
• We tried to drop me off at day care but we had to pay the $80 for me to attend upfront and we didn't have any money yet
• My father took me to work with him but we had the Child Protective Services called on us because it was inappropriate for him to take me to work
• I spent the rest of the "week" at the Police Station coloring in a coloring book - my father was at work and my siblings were at school 
• Our father forgot to get food for our family 

Our second "week:" 

• My brother was sick for part of the week and had to stay home as well as my sister who had been suspended from school for fighting 
• I finally got to go to day care but our father had to find a babysitter (an older child skipping school) for my sister because my brother went to school 
• Father remembered to go to the supermarket and had time to do so
• We also paid our utilities this week 

Our third "week:" 

• I had broken my arm at day care the week before so I had to stay home 
• Father found a babysitter for me when siblings went to school, however the first babysitter was a convicted felon named Eunice and it's illegal to leave your child with a felon so the police got involved in finding me a new babysitter (spent a lot of money doing so) 
• Father forgot to go to the supermarket and we didn't have enough money for food anyway
• We had to pawn off a lot of our belongings to 

Our fourth "week:" 

• I had a babysitter we paid $10 to watch me while my siblings went to school 
• My father and I were held at gunpoint and robbed on our way to the babysitters though 
• We were given a notice that we were going to get evicted if we didn't pay our mortgage so my father paid them $300 and still had to pay $290 after he got his paycheck, but we didn't get a receipt for the partial payment and had no proof that we had paid when they denied that we had put any money towards the payment, we were evicted

This is just our personal experience in our "family" for the month. It was very interesting to see what other families were struggling with while I was being shuffled around to them for day care. This was all a simulation but I can only imagine what the real families in the real world are going through. Therefore, this simulation was very eye opening and I recommend attending one to everyone. 

After we were done I wanted to find a way I could integrate this simulation or something like it into my future classroom. I would love to do a simulation much like this one some day whether it be in my class or as an event but I want to go further and make it a service learning project. 

I couldn't help but include information from a another post by Kelly Tenkely's blog iLearn Technology.  The post is titled "Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world's greatest problems?" She refers to her Twitter friend Ewan McIntosh sharing and opportunity called the ITU Telecom World 2011. This amazing opportunity gives 10,000 students a chance to share their ideas for the fight against world problems, including poverty. You can sign up your school or class on the website to gain access to this very influential opportunity. Also on this website are a lot of great videos I watched that would be perfect to show students as part of our study on these issues. I've included one at the end of this post I would use for a poverty project. I hope they have this opportunity for my future students so we can take part in it. I would also have my students work on a hands on project for our community such as collecting food and serving it at a homeless shelter, hosting our own "empty bowls" dinner, or maybe even our own poverty simulation as well. Students learn valuable life lessons through activities like service learning projects and I will definitely include at least one in my lesson plans each year I teach.

I want to build and shape fantastic citizens, not just fantastic students!

Find this video on YouTube by clicking this link