Imagine the frustration that comes with being arrested for a crime that you have not committed. Add that to the fact that you were next in line for a service, you desperately need in order to stay healthy and care for your family. Justin Stewart ’19 experienced a whole new level of exasperation and hopelessness as a participant in the Communities First Association’s poverty simulation.

“[This program] really taught me how frustrating it is for the lower class to try to do anything in their daily lives,” Stewart said. “Everything about this experience was so much harder than I imagined.”

The poverty simulation took place on Nov. 5 in the McClure Middle School gym. Thirty-one total case studies were handed out to children, parents and elderly, with some parents pairing up with their children, organizer of the simulation Rev. Kate Spelman, said.

The case studies, developed for the simulation by the Communities First Association, all consist of a character living in poverty who needs to complete specific tasks in order to care for themselves and their family each day, Spelman said.

The development team worked with people who are or have been in poverty to create realistic scenarios depicting poverty, Olivia Weathers, the facilitator of the simulation, said.

“It’s a great program for helping people build more empathy with folks in our community,” Spelman said. “In Western Springs especially, we have the privilege of ignoring a lot of the poverty and a lot of the need in the rest of our larger Chicagoland area. This is a really good way to find out about the situations of others in our community in a really holistic way that invites people into the lives of those around them. It lets them understand what a struggle it is to live in poverty.”

The program consisted of three “days” that lasted 15 to 20 minutes each, with a short debriefing in between. Weathers helped participants analyze the experiences and emotions that they experienced during their “day.”

“The ultimate goal is to broaden the view of what poverty looks like in the eyes of the participants,” Weathers said. “In a lot of places, people who don’t have any experiences with poverty may feel like financial poverty is the only form. They aren’t necessarily equipped with the ability to understand the idea that there are different types of poverty.”

The simulation had participants travel between seven different stations using slips of paper labeled “bus passes” each time they moved between stations to complete daily tasks, which were determined by their character. The stations ranged from Daycare/School or the Grocery Store to Jail and Social Security Administration/Immigration Services. Although the case studies did not have a lot of items on the list, the lines for each station were long, for only having a 15 or 20-minute day. So, if all 31 “characters” needed to go to the Wellness Center, and each person takes one minute, at best 11 characters will not receive the help they need, which ended up frustrating many of the participants.

“A lot of times, it felt like we were doing everything right, but we were never where we needed to be,” participant in the simulation Jill Thornberg said.

After all of the tribulations ended, all of the participants gathered to share their experiences in a group discussion led by Weathers. They explored how they felt during the simulation and also what that taught them about the overall experience of poverty.

“I think the most significant impact is that the poverty simulation equips people with the different definitions of poverty,” Weathers said. “The hope is that they take that knowledge on to their everyday lives. They should come to work or school with a different posture when it comes to dealing with people who might be in poverty. Because now that you have a different understanding, you are able to apply that knowledge in a new way.”

In addition to talking about poverty itself, the debriefing also facilitated discussion about the effectiveness of the government programs that are supposed to help people in desperate situations.

“I’ve always been an advocate of these public welfare agencies, but if the idea is good but the execution is poor, how can we fix this?” Karen Martin, who brought her child to the simulation, said during the debriefing.

The experience not only had an impact on the participants, it also affected those working the Rev. Christina Vosteen of the First United Methodist Church of Western Springs, who worked the Wellness station, felt just as powerless as those who needed her help.

“During the debriefing, they talked about how they felt like they didn’t have control, and I definitely felt that way too,” Vosteen said. “I didn’t have the power to go beyond what I was told to do, and it was stressful to repeatedly tell people that I couldn’t help them. It felt like life without grace, and life without grace is as stressful as it gets.”

More than just the experience of financial poverty, the simulation provided participants with experiences related to emotional, mental and spiritual poverty, all of which can contribute to monetary problems, which are typically associated with poverty, Weathers said.

“I think understanding others is extremely important, but it isn’t intuitive,” Weathers said. “Changing your mindset, or your posture, in how you interact with people who are different from you can unlock more human connection. Building tolerance is just an important life skill to have, and I think the poverty simulation does a good job starting those conversations.”