There were no winners on Thursday when community members participated in the role-playing Poverty Paradigm, a learning event sponsored by United Way of Central Kansas. In this simulation, participants played the parts of family members trying to make ends meet while going to work or school, paying bills, buying groceries, and keeping doctor’s appointments – not forgetting to pick up the tab for the kids’ special homework project.
By the end of the four-week simulation, many of the players had been evicted from their homes.
The poverty simulation was made possible with funding from Communities Organizing to Promote Equity (COPE) - Barton County and organized by the staff of the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK).
Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz with ESSDACK guided the participants through the simulation, explaining they would each need a transportation pass every time they stopped at a school, grocery store or other station. People in poverty spend a lot of time thinking about transportation, she said. If they don’t have a working vehicle, they need to depend on rides or public transportation, or walk.
There are many things to worry about when living “paycheck to paycheck,” assuming there is a paycheck, and the number one fear for many people in poverty is losing custody of their children.
Many of the participants in Thursday’s simulation are employed in the system in ways that put them in close contact with community members in need. Donis Harper and Rachel Sandoval both work at the Stafford County Learning Center. That ESSDACK site is similar to the Barton County Academy in Great Bend. In the poverty simulation, Sandoval represented the Close family’s 1-year-old baby, and she went to Child Protective Services when she ended up being left alone. Harper was the 9-year-old family member who was expelled from school for fighting. The family’s food voucher covered almost two weeks of groceries; the simulation lasted for four weeks.
“It’s so easy for people who have a very structured existence, very predictable existence, to judge people in survival mode,” Lewis-Pankratz said. “A lot of times in middle-class systems we’re coming at the family saying, ‘Well, why don’t you plan for this? Why didn’t you think this through?’ We don’t understand that they are going from one crisis to the next crisis.”
The United Way is a good community investment that supports many programs that help, she noted. There are programs that create safe places for families and kids, where they can begin to plan and build a way forward.
After the simulation, a panel of people who are working their away out of poverty through a related program with ESSDACK/Core Community spoke to the participants. (See story on page 4B to learn more about Core Community.)
“The best way for us to change our mindsets around poverty is to let our families lead conversations, because people have a lot of misconceptions,” Lewis-Pankratz said. “It’s about relationships, and it’s about bringing our feelings out of isolation. We match families with middle-class friends, not mentors, because people in the middle class most likely have never been where somebody is and have never gotten out of poverty. So tonight, I want to let you hear from some of your friends and neighbors who have been courageous enough to take a seat to share a little bit.”
The panel members talked recent victories, such as starting a job or getting a loan to buy a good car. They said they want their fellow community members to understand that poverty is not a choice. People in poverty are resourceful at dealing with things that come up but may lack a plan for navigating the system.
They are generous, they are not lazy, and, they should not be judged.
“We’re still human beings,” one panel member said. “At the end of the day, sometimes we’re still really tired and our kid wants a Happy Meal. Or we still need entertainment; we still want to rent a movie once in a while, when we can afford it. And that doesn’t make us terrible.”
Community members who had just gone through the simulation responded. One said, “Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing your stories. You deserve the best.”
Eric Schoendaler, a board member for United Way of Central Kansas who participated in the simulation, said it was eye opening. “This room should be full of more people. They should experience this.”
“We can’t make this change without you,” Lewis-Pankratz told the group.
