Last week, selling all of my belongings seemed more than just tempting. I thought about it while I paid $60 dollars on groceries, after not having eaten for a week.
Last week, selling all of my belongings seemed more than just tempting.
I thought about it while I paid $60 dollars on groceries, after not having eaten for a week. I thought about it when my 13-year-old sister asked for $20 to pay for her medication.
I thought about it when I could not afford the bus ticket to get to the bank.
But after I had spent all of our money on food, bills and medication, when I had finally swallowed my pride and gone to the pawnshop, the owner wanted none of it.
“Are you serious,” he said coldly, staring at the picture of the couch and the stove that I had brought with me. “I have too many of these already.”
Such was the story of the Olson family as depicted during a poverty simulation held last week at the St. Albert Kinsmen Club.
Organized by United Way of the Alberta Capital Region and St. Albert Family and Community Support Services, the simulation aimed to provide participants with a glimpse into the challenges lower income families experience during a regular month in their life.
Over 80 people in the community participated, including members of city council, administration, social services and the Gazette.
We were separated into different family groups, each starting out the month (one hour of the simulation, with each week consisting of 15 minutes) with a different living situation, a limited amount of money, bills to pay and some possessions that we could pawn.
“Try to think as a person experiencing poverty will think,” said Joanne Currie with United Way.
“There is a lot of stress these families deal with. It's not real during this hour but it mirrors some of the stresses families as well as resource people experience.”
The Olsons didn't do well. Our father was in prison, our mother had long run off, and I, the older brother, was left to care for two younger sisters and a three-year-old.
With little more than $300 in our pockets, and over $1,000 in bills to pay, we were in serious trouble.
At first, I thought it best to pay some of our utility bills. But at the end of the first 15-minute week, I had stood in line for hours, spent most of our money, and never made it to the store to buy groceries.
I had also left my younger sister to look after our baby brother. Social services picked him up and my sisters and I decided to leave him under their care for the following weeks. “At least he'll be fed,” we said.
The next week we were illegally evicted from our home.
My sister was suspended from school, while the other one fell ill for a week. But I had no time to speak to their teachers or doctors, as I needed to wait in line again, now at the bank, and then deal with the landlord.
We eventually ran out of money and ended up asking social services to take the lead. We were starved. We were homeless. We had no money.
They returned the baby, gave me food stamps and a map to the shelter.
“No matter how hard you try, you never seem to get ahead,” one woman said at the end of the simulation.
“You don't have power of the situation but you know it's there so you feel really helpless,” another man said.
“There is not enough time to get help.”
At the end of the simulation, I had failed to look after my family.
I had failed to pay the bills or find a legal source of income. I had failed at providing for food, or a home. I was depressed and frustrated, and I understood a lot more about life in poverty, I thought.
Currie said the event simulates the real life situation of people living with low incomes. There are now 120,000 people in the capital region living in poverty. About 37,000 of them are children, she said.
Childcare challenges and a lack of food are only a few of the problems these people encounter day after day, she said. Parents are simply overwhelmed trying to live from paycheque to paycheque.
Even the best attempt at paying all of the bills, staying organized and looking after the family fails when the money runs out, she said.
Meanwhile, social services groups cannot look after all of these people at once, and society lacks the understanding to help them, she said.
“One of the things that happens, people think that's one of the stereotypes about people living in poverty, that they need to worker harder, that they need to be more organized,” said Currie.
“But people are working really hard to move out of poverty and to get ahead.”
She added the simulation was created to sensitize more people to the needs of those living with lower incomes.
She hopes it will also motivate others to become involved in activities that can help reduce and eliminate poverty in their community, she said.
“You don't get to choose in life when your car breaks down or a window breaks,” she said. “But some of us are hit harder by the little mishaps of life than others.”
