Experiencing a state of poverty

from Small Town Papers News Service

By Jeanne Visser
for Sioux County Index

HULL, Iowa --
Do you know what it’s like to be poor….to wonder how you’ll feed your children, pay the rent, look for a job or wade through piles of forms at a welfare office? The faculty of Boyden-Hull was given a small taste of that dilemma at an in-service program last Tuesday.

‘The State of Poverty Welfare Simulation’ from Iowa State University Extension is designed to educate people about what it is like to struggle against poverty. Each teacher was assigned to a ‘family’ and given a role to play.

In the simulation, each family was facing poverty. Some were newly unemployed, some were recently deserted by the ‘breadwinner’ and others were recipients of AFDD (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) – either with or without additional earned income. Still others were disabled or senior citizens receiving social security.

For example, one family was made up of a mother, age 30, recently deserted by the father of her two children. She dropped out of high school after 9th grade and worked as a salesclerk until her first pregnancy. At home she had a 17 year-old daughter and a son who is 14. She had to learn the processes of applying for AFDC and food stamps, keeping a viable means of transportation and making sure her delinquent children stayed in school.

The task of each ‘family’ was to provide for basic necessities and shelter during the course of a month.

To make the experience a little more realistic, volunteers from the community played the roles of community resources and services for families, such as the banker, employment officer, food pantry worker, grocer, pawnbroker, police officer, utility collector and welfare caseworkers.

The family units were crowded together in one space to add to the sense of confusion and frustration. During the exercise, 15 minutes represented one week, and during that short time, families were required to take care of basic necessities.

But standing in line, dealing with mistakes, language barriers and uncooperative agencies ate up too much time and after one month, none of the families were able to secure the basic necessities and shelter.

Afterwards, teachers evaluated the experience and reported the frustration they felt trying to complete all the tasks in short time, while maneuvering the roadblocks through the ‘system’.

“We were cheated, stolen from and not treated well by some people that we hoped would help us,” one teacher reported. “It was very frustrating.”

Even teachers who played the role of ‘children’ in the families, and went to school every day, reported being very concerned about their parents and wondering how they could help the family.

Those reactions are what the creators of the simulation hope for, reported Rhonda Rosenboom, Field Specialist with ISU Extension. “Each family was in a different situation, but they all come up short financially. We hope this experience opens people’s eyes to what it’s like to be poor and make them aware of some of their struggles.”

“We ask a lot of families in our society,” she added. “Sometimes we don’t realize the burden we put on them. Now, we hope teachers will think about being sensitive to those living in poverty and maybe come up with ideas to make their struggle a little easier.”

Boyden-Hull Superintendent Steve Grond agreed. “This was just a short simulation for us, and fortunately we can walk away from it and go back to our lives. But I hope we all have a keener sense that sometimes when kids come into our classroom, they may have far bigger issues on their minds than what a verb is.”