SmallTownPapers News Service, WA
02-27-07
Experiencing a state of poverty
By Jeanne Visser
for Sioux County Index
HULL, Iowa (STPNS) -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 inservice 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 yearold 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.”
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