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CANTON — Community volunteers joined staff of Canton Area School District for a poverty simulation event on Friday, Jan. 14 in the high school’s gymnasium.
The event was presented to the district by BLaST IU 17, who received a grant towards the cost of materials to make it possible.
“The Poverty Simulation is part of a grant BLaST Intermediate Unit 17 received from First Community Foundation Partnership of Pennsylvania. This grant, ‘Making Ends Meet for Students from Poverty,’ focuses on addressing the opportunity and access gap for students and families of economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The Poverty Simulation helps educators and community partners collaborate, empathize, and discuss supportive systems to meet students and families in need,” said Rebecca Gibboney, Coordinator of Professional Learning at BLAST IU 17.
This event saw about 80 volunteers, both community members as well as faculty of the district, to simulate a family.
According to the press release given to this newspaper by Blast, the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) was designed to help people better understand the realities of poverty. Participants included staff members of various human service agencies and local civic and community leaders.
“This program helps people understand the complexities and frustrations of living in poverty day to day. With a greater awareness of its impact, we can more effectively address the poverty issues in our community,” Gibboney said in the press release.
“It is important for educators to participate in this simulation because it helps build empathy. Unfortunately, this is the reality for far too many students and, as a result, students may come to school tired and hungry, be assertive in their behavior and seemed disengaged or emotionally distraught. The more we equip educators to acknowledge and address the additional adverse social and economic risk factors, the more we can truly meet and impact the individual lives of students.”
Data collected for the simulation came from ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This means households that aren’t necessarily at the poverty level, but are still living less than the basic cost of living for the county.
The data showed that 12% of Bradford County households met poverty level and 25% are considered ALICE households. While conditions have improved for some households, many continue to struggle, especially as wages fail to keep pace with the cost of essentials (housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and a basic smartphone plan).
The purpose of this simulation is to give educators an idea of the district they provide their services for, with a role-play on the lives of low-income families.
Participants were assigned families and given packet information on the statistics of that family. Some had disabilities, others were senior citizens on limited income, while others may have had a teen pregnancy in their household. The goal was to “make it four weeks,” or four 15-minute intervals, in which they simulated going to a job, their children going to school or daycare, paying their bills, and even trying not to let their home be robbed.
“I think it was a great experience for our teachers. I think that sometimes we struggle to understand what our students and their families face on a daily basis,” said Canton Elementary Principal Mike Wells.
Wells noted that at the elementary, his faculty has been studying students living in poverty for a couple years now.
“Most teachers come from at least the middle class and do not realize what living in poverty is like. Although this was a simulation, I think that it really opened some eyes of them. We realize that developing positive relationships with students living in poverty, and all students is a very important part of educating students. Things like this make everyone realize that maybe there are other stressors and factors that do not allow students to study or do as much homework as we would like them to. We don’t want to lower our expectations but we do need to understand the students who we work with. I think it went well and made me feel that it prepared my staff better to work with all of our students. I think that many of us now better understand what others may face, although most of us are not facing these same stressors in life.
They interacted with human service agencies, grocers, pawnbrokers, bill collectors, job interviewers, police officers and other community agencies, all other community volunteers at the simulation.
“CAPS enables participants to look at poverty from a variety of angles and then to recognize and discuss the potential for change within their local communities,” said Elain West, former executive director of the Missouri Community Action Network, which made the simulation available nationwide.
The Missouri Community Action Network is an association of community action agencies throughout the state that provide a variety of services to low-income individuals and families. Please visit their website at www.communityaction.org to find out more about the poverty simulation.