United Way Poverty Simulation

I have the honor of participating in the United Way of Champaign County’s Emerging Community Leaders program this year. Me and 50 other young professionals were chosen from the area to participate in this program. The program is designed to help promote networking within the community and gain awareness of issues present in our community and how non-profit organizations function. Last night I participated in the first Advancement Seminar of the program- the Poverty Simulation. This was so eye opening!

The simulation is designed to show how families that are poor, or low-income survive with little to no resources available. For the poverty simulation we were assigned into groups of 4 with our fellow classmates. This group was considered our “family”. Each person was assigned a family role (i.e.- Father, mother, child). The simulation lasted 1 hour and each 15 minute segment of the hour was considered a week. You are given a packet at the beginning of the simulation with the background information about your family. Based on this information is how you will be living in your fictional family.

Conveniently, I was assigned to the farm family. My family was a family in which the father farmed to make a living and had no other supporting income. The mother did not work. We suffered a draught and lost all of our crops on 500 acres and the government subsidies we were receiving ran out. All we had to our name was $250 in a bank account and a corn picker and our home, both of which we still owed money on. We had to find a way to pay all of our bills for the month, buy food and pay for transportation for the month. Needless to say, things were very tight!

Prior to the poverty simulation, I had a little bit of an idea of what to expect. What I expected was no match  to what I actually experienced! Even though this was a simulation, it was still a stressful experience. We were making real-world decisions that people less fortunate have to face. Such as, pawning mom’s engagement ring to pay bills or deciding whether your parents will use the money to go find jobs, or you will use the money to go to high school. Also, not eating for a month because you can’t afford to pay bills and buy food.

These decisions became very real, very fast. I felt a special connection to this particular situation since it was a farm family. A situation like this could very easily happen to my own family. One bad year of farming, or a draught and we could potentially be in this same situation. This is one of the most important lesson’s I learned- it only takes one bad circumstance to throw everything off. Everyone is just one step away from being low-income or poor. Even though I have been very fortunate and have not ever experience poverty in my life, I can definitely appreciate those that do have to face this on a daily basis.

 Anyone that is looking to do something meaningful within the community and learn more about what goes on in Champaign County should definitely look into the United Way Emerging Community Leaders program for 2013!