Poverty Simulation Teaching Empathy, Leading to Change
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To walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is to try and grasp their life situation. The University of Wisconsin-Extension system is taking this approach with a program that allows participants to experience what it’s like to live in poverty.
“Poverty is a reality for many individuals and families, but unless you’ve experienced poverty, it’s difficult to truly understand,” said Judith Knudsen, UW-Madison Division of Extension and area extension director for a region that includes Door County.
The Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) is an interactive immersion experience that enables participants to role-play the lives of low-income families and experience the challenges they face in order to promote understanding and find beneficial solutions.
Participants are assigned households that contain between one and five individuals and a packet of information with listing household expenses, incomes, assets, loans, debts, employment status and more. The participants then spend a “month” living within their means through 15-minute segments, each reflecting one week’s time.
“It’s really a stressful experience for them [the participants],” Knudsen said. “We tell them, ‘Think of the families that have to deal with this on a regular basis.’”
The simulation was developed by the Missouri Community Action Network to increase awareness of the day-to-day reality of those who struggle to provide housing, childcare, food, transportation and health care for themselves and their families.
“They [participants] need to feed their families, find a job or keep a job, get the kids to school, pay the expenses,” Knudsen said. “Some have healthcare issues so they have to go to the clinic. They have to have transportation passes to go anywhere and they’re not given many and they need to purchase them.”
Knudsen said they’ve been offering the program for about a decade and do roughly 10 simulations annually for school districts, faith communities, nonprofit organizations and any organization that wants to sensitize its employees or members to the struggles of low-income families or individuals. She’s conducted most of those in Brown County, doing her first one in Door County for Sevastopol School District’s 84 teachers during a Dec. 1 inservice day. Aaron Hilts, the Sevastopol elementary school principal who coordinated the program, said teachers were still talking about the simulation a week later.
“Our staff went from sympathetic to empathetic,” Hilts said. “That, to me, is huge.”
Hilts said the biggest “AHA”-moment for the teachers was the way fixed costs, like rent and utilities, quickly depleted limited incomes for other necessities.
“Many thought the fixed costs needed to be paid so the thing always on the back burner was food, because it’s a variable cost,” he said.
The levels of stress and anxiety within the room were palpable, Hilts said, depending upon the simulation roles.
“There was a family who had lost a job and they were in a better situation because they had money in the bank,” Hilts said. “Other families who had been dealing with this [without savings] felt a lot more stressed. They had multiple places they had to be at the same time and had two jobs and were working. It painted a very realistic picture for staff.”
While the simulation uses “play” money, poverty is a reality for many individuals and families in Door County. A family of four that makes $30,000 or less meets the federal poverty standard, and 9% of all Door County households are there (12% of Door County children live in poverty, or 1 in 8), according to 2021 statistics from United Way of Door County, the latest data available that arrived in the summer of 2023 (there’s always a two-year delay in receiving the data after analysis, according to Amy Kohnle, executive director).
An even larger group of Door County households and individuals make more than the federal poverty level, yet are unable to afford basic necessities, even though they work. United Way refers to this demographic as ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) – households that live paycheck-to-paycheck with no extra money to set aside in savings – and this describes another 24% of Door County households.
About 35% of Sevastopol School District’s student population is considered economically disadvantaged, Hilts said, a datapoint derived from the number of families on the Free and Reduced Meal Program.
“It’s not something where you would walk into our school and notice that population exists, let alone that number is as high as it is,” Hilts said.
Being mindful of challenges made noticeable by the simulation has sparked ideas on ways to make changes, Hilts said. Elementary-school supply lists can be developed based upon need and cost. If a certain percentage of beginning readers don’t have someone to read to them as is recommended, options can be developed.
“Expecting students to read a certain amount at home has a benefit, but recognizing through these simulations that when parents are working two jobs, there’s not someone to read to kids at home,” Hilts said.
Knudsen will do another simulation in Door County in April for the Door County Library system.
