By Jaime North
LEWISBURG -- Lauren Scholl wanted to get a start on her career as a elementary teacher by getting a glimpse of poverty, which she expects to encounter in the classroom.
"With working in education, it's good to know the background of your students," said Scholl, a Penn State freshman. "I'm going to have to know how to approach and deal with some of the issues my students will be bringing with them to school."
Scholl was among 40 people Monday night at the Country Cupboard participating in the Union-Snyder Community Action Agency's second annual poverty simulation, designed to serve as a snapshot into what it's like to live in poverty based on situations the agency works with daily.
Participants -- who represented a variety of local groups, including food pantries, school districts and colleges -- were split into simulated families facing different challenges, such as being newly unemployed, working poor, dealing with divorce, living on Social Security and surviving on public assistance.
The families went through a simulated month, broken into four 15-minute segments, where they had to make sure their children went to school or to child care, went to work themselves and had meet other responsibilities and challenges facing low-income families.
Participants had to manage their travel with ticket vouchers and were given a tight budget.
"The goal is to raise awareness of poverty in the local area and to bring the community together to help solve some of the issues facing poverty-stricken people," said Robyn Rinck, resource director for the Community Action team, adding the simulation was a statewide project of the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania for National Community Action Month.
Rinck said the agency's first simulation last year, which involved close to 70 participants, helped build a foundation for this month's two simulations. This year's simulations will be used to develop ways service groups can improve on what they do, according to Rinck.
"What we found was people started to realize the obstacles facing their clients and how challenging those issues can be," Rinck said. "Now that we have built a foundation, we hope this year we will continue to move forward with what we're learning from the simulation."
Dave Drezner, regional housing coordinator with the Center for Independent Living of Central Pennsylvania, said the simulation shed light on the difficulties his clients have accessing resources and how difficult it can be to know about the available resources.
"This really brings it home to a lot of us who work with people in poverty," Drezner said. "Knowing how to better inform clients about the programs and making it easier for them to access services will enable us to be more effective."
According to Drezner, the worst part of the experience was feeling the stress of having to pay bills and raise children on a small budget.
"There's definitely a feeling of powerlessness," Drezner said. "It's tough to know where to start when you seem to have everything working against you."
Union-Snyder Community Action Agency will sponsor a second poverty simulation on May 14 at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Selinsgrove, which will include a forum presentation led by Barry Denk, of The Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
For more information, visit www.union-snydercaa.org.
