This event creates a unique opportunity for our community to engage with the Community Action movement as a whole by providing an opportunity for people with low incomes to engage and actively build opportunities within our community and put our ethics into action by keeping the community informed about issues affecting the poor and would facilitate communication across sectors.
The Poverty Simulation
This event will feature a Poverty Simulation in the morning.
The poverty simulation experience is designed to help audiences begin to understand what it might be like to live in a typical low-income family trying to survive from month to month. It is a simulation, not a game. The object is to sensitize audiences to the realities faced by low-income people. In the simulation, 44 to 82 participants assume the roles of up to 26 different families facing poverty. Some families are newly unemployed, some are recently deserted by the “breadwinner,” some are homeless, and others are recipients of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, formerly AFDC), either with or without additional earned income. Still others are senior citizens receiving Disability or Retirement or grandparents raising their grandchildren. The task of the “families” is to provide for basic necessities and shelter during the course of four 15-minute “weeks.”
The experience lasts from two and a half to three hours. It includes an introduction and briefing, the actual simulation exercise, and a debriefing period in which participants and volunteers share their feelings and experiences and talk about what they have learned about the lives of people in poverty.
The Primary Goals of the Event are:
1. Educate the community on the conditions of poverty in our community.
2. Gather community stakeholders and low-income individuals to discuss the strategic issues facing the low-income individuals & families, the agency, and the community as a whole.
3. Determine collaborative steps to make our community happier, healthier, and more connected (our agency vision).
