'A walk in their shoes': Simulation gives realistic look at poverty

MANITOWOC — Marti Carey found herself temporarily homeless Friday morning.

Even though it was only part of a Poverty Simulation presentation, she was feeling its effects.

"I feel like I don't know what's going to happen in the next minute," said Carey, one of 65 people who stepped into the "State of Poverty."

The simulation is a "walk in my shoes experience. It's designed to help participants understand what it might be like to be part of a typical low-income family trying to survive from month to month," said Faye Malek, family living educator for the Manitowoc County University of Wisconsin-Extension, coordinator of the event with Teri Zuege-Halvorsen, her counterpart in Calumet County.

Local "actors" manned tables that dotted the perimeter of the County Board Room at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc. The tables represented various services including the Friendly Utility Company, Any City Police Department, Quick Cash, Big Dave's Pawn Shop and Sweet Dreams Hotel.

Participants were assigned to families and given the task of providing for the basic necessities for that family for one month, which was reduced to four 15-minute-long weeks for the simulation, Malek said.

The group was open to anyone wanting to learn more about poverty and included many professionals who worked with low-income families.

Participant Carey, 33, works in family support for CESA 7 Early Head Start, a program for young children from low-income homes. As 17-year-old "Alice Aber," she was put into a dire situation in which her father had lost his job and had run out of unemployment benefits.

"This is a very real-life situation that I deal with in my work," she said.

Danielle Zeamer, 22, became "Felicia Fuentes," 43, a mother of two teenagers.

"It's nerve-wracking," she said as she stood in line at a table labeled Human Services, where she went to seek assistance with transportation and food. "I have a plan but I can't get anything accomplished. I go someplace and they tell me I have to go someplace else. I didn't feed my family last week."

Zeamer, a social work major at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay was participating as part of her internship with the Calumet County Department of Human Services.

The director of diversity at Silver Lake College, Sister Carmen Marie Diaz, 45, turned into 1-year-old "Roland Rowan" for the morning.

In her role, she wandered away from her "mother," who was standing in line for a bus pass. Her mother lost not only her place in line but precious time chasing after her during the exercise.

Trevor McCulley, 19, and Tracy Klessper, 42, also stepped into their roles as the "Epperman family" teens.

Their mother left them at home, assuming they would go to school, only to find that they skipped classes. They ended up in protective custody.

"We don't have any way to get to school," Klessper said. "Mom hasn't been back for days."

In real life, McCulley is an education student at UW-Manitowoc and Klessper is a home visitor for Lakeshore Family Resources.

For Janet Vogel, public health nurse with the Manitowoc County Health Department, the simulation scenarios weren't far-fetched.

"It's very hard for the average person to understand how impoverished people can really be," said Vogel, who become "Bart Boling," 15, for the morning.

She hoped that the experience would help her connect her clients with community resources more quickly.

For people on the other side of the tables, it was a learning experience as well.

"I learned that desperate people are pretty desperate," said Manitowoc County Clerk Jamie Aulik, who acted as proprietor of Big Dave's Pawn Shop.

He was authorized to give customers up to 50 percent of the value of their items and found that those with negotiating skills fared better.

"I've been paying less than a third of what the actual values of the items are," he said.

Michele Moldenhauer, program coordinator for the Holy Family Memorial RSVP Volunteer Center, became a schoolteacher who had to deal with her students' many problems.