Participants in the Exploring the State of Poverty Welfare Simulation can enact what a low-income family experiences in an average month.

The Poverty Simulation, sponsored by ISU Extension to Families, is Tuesday from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Room 117 of MacKay Hall.

Kristin Taylor, extension program specialist in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said participants will act out the roles of various people in a low-income community.

“It’s kind of a role-play activity,” she said. “They interact with community resources around the room, things like bankers and pawnbrokers, social workers.”

Participants will try to attend to all the responsibilities a low-income family would have during the course of a month, said Diana Broshar, extension program specialist in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“They need to maintain their home, keep their home secure, feed their family, keep the utilities on, if they have children, keep the children in school. Those kind of day-to-day activities,” she said.

In the Welfare Simulation, every 15 minutes is a week in the life of the “family,” Broshar said.

“It’s a simulated reality, so people are put into groups of four if there are four people in their family or groups of three if there are three people in the family,” she said. “They’re given a description and series of assets. It’s a simulated community that people are living in for a ‘month.'”

Broshar said she hopes the event will allow the group to be able to empathize with these families.

“The overall purpose of the simulation is to sensitize participants to the realities of poverty,” she said. “It’s really to help develop understanding among those who’ve never experienced poverty.”

Taylor said participants have walked away from the simulation with new insight toward people living in poverty.

“A lot of participants have commented it’s a real eye-opener,” she said. “I think a lot of people don’t realize some of the constraints low-income people have on them, whether transportation’s an issue, if they need child care.”

Many of the 55 people already signed up are students, and they could benefit from learning about low-income families, she said.

“We promote it as a good session for people who are going to go out and work as teachers, social workers, health care workers,” Taylor said. “Really, it’s a good activity for anyone to raise their awareness.”

The simulation is free and open to the public, although registration is required by today.

To register, participants can call Taylor at 294-8538 or e-mail her at [email protected].