Volunteers switch roles, experience life in poverty

from The Daily Princetonian

By Anastasia Erbe
Princetonian Staff Writer

"Welcome to Realville," Angela Degraff said to a crowd of about 50 people Saturday morning.

They were gathered in the Whig Hall Senate Chamber for "Realville," a poverty simulation complete with paper money, "stores" and a "jail" stocked with handcuffs.

Intended to give the participants firsthand knowledge of what it's like to be poor, the Community Action Poverty Simulation was cosponsored by the Student Volunteers Council (SVC) and the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton.

Though the event was targeted at young volunteers, people from eight to 70 years old were given a chance to experience a life more like the ones of the people they help.

Participants were assigned to family units with one to six members and given a limited budget to survive on in Realville. Some played people on welfare, while others were disabled or senior citizens on Social Security. Each family situation was based on that of an actual struggling family in Missouri, where the program was started, Degraff said. Degraff is the president of the educational consulting firm AngelWorks.

"We looked into the simulation because of the power of experiential learning," Crisis Ministry director Sally Osmer said. "It can be more motivating [in our attempt to] change attitudes and change actions."

Participants were encouraged to act like the person they were playing — healthy teenagers who don't want to stay inside on weekends will be annoyed if they have to stay in the house, parents who can't pay their bills will be tired and frustrated and little children who haven't eaten will be uncooperative.

A young woman portraying a little girl whined to her mom, "I'm hungry" and "I need my medicine." Husbands and wives called out to each other, "Have a good day, honey."

Over a "one-month" period consisting of four 15-minute "weeks," the families struggled to keep their homes secure, to keep their electricity and water from getting cut off, to pay loans and to attend work or school.

Money started to disappear, transportation grew scarce and lines to get groceries and cash stretched longer.

Crisis after crisis ensued. One participant, who played a father who had just gotten divorced last week, was in the process of being arrested when his child got very sick in the day care center. Desperate parents begged the other families for transportation to get home to their one-year-old.

Participants came from many groups, including University students, members of the Crisis Ministry, the SVC, youth groups, students from Princeton High School and students from the Princeton Theological Seminary.

Osmer said the simulation reflects the Crisis Ministry's goal of encouraging broader change in the community and providing emergency relief. "We want to encourage justice work," she said.

SVC executive board member Swati Antala said that it was important to raise awareness of the realities of poverty through events like the simulation. "So many people have no idea [of what it's like]," she said.

Another goal of the event was to encourage community service and help volunteers who already deal with low-income families go about their work more sensitively, organizers said.

Dave Brown, staff director of the SVC, said the American dream works both ways. In one sense, "anyone can be the president of the United States," he said. But the flipside of this, he added, is that people blame the impoverished for their condition and do not help them, believing that they simply didn't work hard enough.

Crisis Ministry Assistant Director Marcia MacKillop said she hopes this event will heighten local policymakers' awareness of poverty. A member of Rep. Rush Holt's office participated in the simulation.

She added that the Crisis Ministry aspires to one day create a world in which its services are no longer needed.

"We pray every morning that our doors will be closed," she said.