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Poverty
Poverty Simulation Proves Effective
Families lost their homes Friday at the Bayfront Convention Center. A single mother scrambled unsuccessfully to pay her energy bills and keep her phone service connected. Desperate parents waited in long lines at social-service agencies hoping to apply for more food stamps to feed their families.
These fictional experiences seemed all too real at the poverty simulation sponsored by the Erie Community Foundation and Greater Erie Community Action Committee (GECAC).
The program was modeled after similar poverty simulations in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Kalamazoo, Mich. Eighty members of the Erie community, including Erie County Executive Mark DiVecchio, 3rd District Congressional Democratic nominee Kathy Dahlkemper, Erie County Convention Center Authority member Marlene Mosco and County Councilman Joe Giles, attended.
In the simulation, a one-hour time block was divided into 15-minute segments to represent four weeks in a month. Participants portrayed the lives of low-income families, including single parents, people with disabilities and senior citizens struggling on Social Security. Play money was used to help make scenarios seem more real.
This was an eye-opening hour for many participants, who received a taste of what struggling families must go through every day. They had to make difficult choices between paying an electric bill or buying food. There was a jail where teenagers from broken homes were sent after being caught stealing or buying drugs.
The simulation illustrated in painful, often scary, ways how a growing number of families frantically attempt to provide food, shelter and other basic needs that most of us take for granted.
At the same time, they need to navigate the imposing system of community resources and services.
"You can see how exhausting this daily fight is," DiVecchio said at one point.
"You know how it is, but you don't," Giles said.
The simulation was an excellent, creative and educational follow-up to the Erie Community Foundation's study, "The High Cost of Poverty--It Affects Us All." It was also a useful exercise to create a broader awareness of the plight of thousands of individuals and families in the Erie region who are trapped in poverty.
Awareness is an important step, but the real key is turning awareness into action to help the estimated 40,000 poor in our community. Making progress on providing real solutions requires the political and private sectors to work together to find answers.
Poverty isn't going away. It's only going to get worse if we don't do something about it.
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