Cochrane hosted its first Community Action Poverty Simulation on June 16 to show participants what living in poverty looks and feels like.
The simulation was hosted by Solange Lalonde, lead project developer and facilitator with Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia, and Chelsea Jackson, learning specialist with Rocky View Schools, at the Cochrane Royal Canadian Legion.
The simulation assigns each participant a different character to play with a different challenge to overcome. For example, a character could be a single parent with limited resources and no transportation who must find a way to get their children to daycare and themselves to work.
“Poverty is often portrayed as a stand alone issue - but this simulation allows individuals to walk a month in the shoes of someone who is facing poverty and realize how complex and interconnected issues of poverty really are,” states the simulation’s brochure.
Since the simulation kit was created by the Missouri Association for Community Action, the simulation outlined some differences between poverty in Canada and poverty in the United States.
“We’re trying to ‘Canadian-ize’ the simulation but in order to do that we had to go through the facilitator training down in Missouri. Now we’ll make little changes to it – for example they have electronic benefits cards but we don’t have them. So things like that need to be changed,” Jackson explained.
After the simulation ended, participants were given the chance to debrief and share their thoughts. Many agreed they didn’t realize how complex the roles they were assigned really were.
“It was shocking how real it became in a hurry and how intense it was and how stressful it was. I started to consider things and think things that I never would have done before – it gave me some insight into things that I was shocked that I did and crossing some ethical boundaries that maybe I might not have ever considered before,” said Colleen Janssen-Hood, chair of the Rocky View County’s Family & Community Support Services.
“Trying to access the services and then dealing with the line ups and the wait periods and just not having basic needs met, all while being in a situation where I was actually one of the better ones off,” she said.
Janssen-Hood described the simulation as “profoundly emotional” as opposed to strictly intellectual.
“You can intellectualize a lot of it, you can read a report and say things like ‘You know I have an understanding.’ but it’s a very different kind of understanding when you’re put in the thick of it and having to deal with the stress and the emotion and the relationships they put you in,” Janseen-Hood said.
