At first, I couldn’t comprehend how a poverty simulation would work, or thought it would seem silly, as a lot of us have grown up experiencing some level of poverty and don’t need a simulation to show us what poverty is.
But the way the simulation was run showed me aspects of poverty beyond our lived experiences and stereotypes. The simulation was divided into four weeks at 15-minute intervals to represent the life of low-income families.
My role in the poverty simulation was the Inter Faith Services, whose responsibility was to provide shelter to evicted families. The requirements of my job were to provide clothing, food vouchers and transportation passes to families in need. I would have families coming up asking for five food vouchers, but my role as an institution with limited resources was to use my judgment to sparingly give the vouchers out.
At a certain point, we had no more room in the shelter, and we had to turn away families who are homeless. There were families who hadn’t eaten in weeks and had no adequate shelter to provide them security.
I think one of the things that opened my mind is stereotypes about lower income families–that they’re lazy, they don’t want to work or just don’t care, which evidently is not true.
There are many factors that contribute to supporting a family and or yourself while being stricken with poverty.
There is time, energy, and money that is taken while trying to get to work, the supermarket, finding governmental assistance and paying your everyday bills. This is not realized by most of us; we do not have a government that provides necessary care and adequate assistance to low-income families.
There was a lack of time and resources to sufficiently fill everyday necessities. This left children hungry, individuals couldn’t refill prescriptions, did not have enough funds to pay utilities, and they got fired from their jobs. This and many more hardships lead to the families being evicted.
Leaving the poverty simulation provided me with a deeper understanding of the complexity of poverty, and how its intersectionality affected lower income individuals at different levels depending on their own identities.
