when I first started doing consulting
for ESSDACK with school systems around
poverty I knew I needed a tool
we want educators to understand that
parents in poverty are not anti
education they're just pro survival
you've got a little bit of resources
you've got some money or anything I would go find another family
and say hey please take us in that poverty
simulation really takes people into
survival mode
this is a real life for a lot of people and
this is what they deal with and we
expect their kids to come to school and
act like superstar students and we
expect all families to act like
everything's great when this is what
they're dealing with at home don't don't
judge because you don't ever know what
they're going those other little kids
are going though the simulation is set up that
we can take a hundred and one people and
stick them in poverty for a month
it's simulated in one hour
then we can have up to fifty people
helping us run it on the outside so the
people on the outside there are
community friends so they're the doctor
the mental health the library where you
read to your kids the jail CPS child
protective services different places
that families visit every day we're
about to have a whole bunch of homeless
families it's about to get real here
in a poverty what the families figured
out is that your relationships are your
resources
I knew that my story was powerful but I
knew that they were gonna still be
people in the room that just couldn't
connect the dots in a meaningful enough
way to shift them
you
