By Kelsey Ligon
Could you survive a month in poverty? This was the question the Community Foundation of Boone County posed to 60 Boone County residents Sept. 16 in an hour-long poverty simulation.
With 6.3 percent of Boone County’s residents living in poverty, the foundation wanted to help residents understand what it’s like to live for a month in poverty.
The simulation was broken into four 15-minute sessions that represented the four weeks in a month. Each person was assigned a family that faced one of the many hardships that compound poverty: homelessness, absent parents, joblessness and others.
Faced with these challenging circumstances, participants had to find a job, get to work, take care of bills and buy groceries, all within 15 minutes. If participants failed at these tasks, their family went hungry that week.
When the simulation started, people walked casually to get a job or to get groceries at a nearby table and they waited patiently in long lines. By the end of the simulation, people were running to get everything taken care of because they had realized that no matter how hard they tried, there just wasn’t enough time.
Jim Michalke of Thorntown said that the simulation made it clear how overwhelming living in poverty can feel.
“I almost would’ve preferred to be unemployed to be able to go around to take care of everything,” he said.
A resident of Advance, participant Nita McCormick said that the simulation was necessary because “people in poverty are no different from yourself.”
At the end of the simulation, the Community Foundation encouraged participants to get involved with volunteer opportunities that benefit Boone County, including the Boys and Girls Club, Indy Reads, the Head Start program and many others.
