Connect the conference with things we've read. Did it enlighten you in any new or different way about poverty? Reenforce what you already thought? Post away!
Is there ever going to be a time when poverty can be eliminated completely? Besides raising attention and money what can we do? The one activity that left a lasting impression on me was the poverty simulation. We may not have been able to experience the actuality of poverty but at some gut level through the simulation we could understand the desperation and struggles that these people go through everyday. For example, the desperation of not being able to make enough money to where you resort to prostitution, robbing banks at gun point, petty theft, or even selling drugs. My character that I was during the simulation was Lucy Locke, a 15 year old girl who was involved in sports and went to school and worked part time. She may have been involved in sports and enjoyed them but she certainly didn’t have time. I would go to school and after school I would go straight to work and after work I’d go home to my family and hand over my check. My money that I made went to helping the family, not to anything I may have wanted. In that way, Lucy was different from me. My senior year I went to school, did my extra- curricular activities, did homework, and worked part time. However, Lucy’s paycheck went to her family, my paycheck went to the gas I put in my car that my parents bought for me and for clothes that I wanted but didn’t need. Lucy didn’t get that option. One week I came home to find out we had been evicted from our home. Fortunately, we were able to pay our mortgage and get our home back but we didn’t eat very well that week. We were one of the lucky families however, we had one car paid off and another one we were paying loans on. We were able to keep our home and eat something at least every week. The next thing that left a lasting impression on me was the amount of good one percent of our budget does. That we can help that many people with that little amount of money is amazing and should be kept up. Word Count: 366
This conference helped reinforce my ideas about what I have learned about poverty over the years. Going through the simulation I was able to see how some of my kids, that I take care of at camp, have grown up and what they go through on a regular day. It was so hard to sit there and know that there are children out there that live in a family where they are not able to have the normal things that we get everyday. I have one boy that I take care of at camp that has a little brother and they live with their grandfather. Their mother is no longer in the picture and their grandmother passed away last year. These two young boys both have trouble at school because neither of them have the attitude to keep them focused. They were also both affected by a school closing that now makes them ride a bus twenty minutes from their house to another school. Neither of them can do things after school because their grandfather cannot take them anywhere. They have no car; they walk to the grocery store. I know that these two boys have gone weeks where all they get to eat is what they get at school. It is so hard to know that there are little boys out there that have to become “little adults” and become twenty years older than they are. It was so hard to sit there and listen to them speak about families going through the same things around the world and our government wanting to cut the funding. Its hard to know that there are people here that cannot get funding from our government, and now the government does not want to keep the funding for other people around the world. I hope that the government will realize how much this 1% is a good thing, and it can help more than the people here.
Over the course of the week at the LEAP conference, there have been many speakers and facts about poverty. While they were all important and relevant, the most impacting demonstration was the Poverty Simulation. It allowed me to have a first hand experience to realize the hardships that a family in poverty would experience. Just as we saw in Kozol’s novel, there is a clear difference in the lives of those who live in poverty. “’People on the outside […] don’t know’” what it is like for those in poverty because they have never had to live it (Kozol 104). It is one thing to read a story about the lives of people in poverty and to feel sympathy but until you live it, even in a simulation, it is impossible to experience empathy. The challenges that a person in poverty experiences are not even remotely understood to people who have never had to struggle to put food on the table for themselves and their children. The system is not geared to help the poor succeed but instead to keep them where they are. Big business and corporations focus on the bottom line and the money that goes in their pocket but when the population as a whole and not just those in suffering begin to complain then there is a chance for there to be a change in the system. When the issues of others begin to become issues for everyone then the change will come. It is when people want to change that people will change. Some people will focus on local poverty and others will focus on global poverty, but whatever the cause that someone takes it is still important to find something that is important to you and make a change for it. As long as people try then something will eventually try. Word Count: 303
The LEAP poverty conference definitely related to ties made between the materials we’ve read as well as to past experiences that I have seen and interacted with poverty. The one event that I felt I related to the most was probably the wednesday morning lecture with Mr. Alphonse and the idea he tried to portray that there was more to do for the people who are impoverished than donate money. I thought the similar idea was shared with Shane Claiborne’s and shown how he directly interacted with the poor, but showed the little interactions and conversation between him and others were the driving force in helping people. I went on a mission trip to Guatemala my senior year of high school and I remember talking with my youth pastor and he spoke to me about how he had spoken with the pastor down there if it would be a better idea to send all the money saved up by not sending people down there and having to feed them for a whole two weeks, but Pastor Luis told my youth pastor that the money is not what helps these people; it’s the direct contact and love that people need in poverty. People can give hand outs of money, but what really helps those in poor conditions is love, someone to be there and comfort them or play with them and play with the kids. I will never forget those Guatemalan kids because of no matter how much they didn’t have, the joy they felt and showed when they were playing with us was the greatest thing I have ever seen. I believe the love God shares with us through Jesus is not only a salvation to save us from our wickedness, but to also bring out the pure in us with one another. The joy and purity those kids showed me while they were running around without shoes and food possibly helped me understand God and his love more than I could ever help them by giving them shoes or even helping them build a house for those same kids who were homeless. word count: 353
The conference along with the poverty simulation definitely enlightened my ways of seeing how people living in poverty are like. For the longest time, I thought people should be grateful for everything that they have without complaining, while I was complaining about my life constantly. Through the conference and simulation, I began to reflect on my life and never have I been so grateful to be where I am at. I have the resources for a good education, the foundation support from my parents and good friends, professors willing to help, yet I’m complaining that my life sucks because I can’t have it my way all the time. The activity was more effective on me because I was actually living in their shoes for two hours without realizing that people live this way throughout their lives without complaining like I did. At first, it was a fun activity for me, but as my classmates and I participated longer, it became more stressful especially with all the restrictions. The character that I played was a 50 year old grandma who supports her family by working full time while babysitting her grandson, grand-daughter, and disabled husband. Throughout the activity, the hardest part was getting back to our “home” and cashing my check to pay all of the monthly bills. I couldn’t believe that I was only making approximately 9.00 an hour and I had so many bills to pay. I have been working since I was sixteen, but it was more for my own desires rather than actually paying bills. I remember I racked up the phone bill to 1000.00 one time and my father made me pay back every penny because he had to make me realize that money doesn’t grow on trees and that I shouldn’t take things for granted. It took me about a month and a half to pay back the money for the phone bill, but I still didn’t really learn my lesson because I know my parents will always help me out. These people are not like me. They don’t have anyone that they can rely on financially, emotionally, and physically. The part that made me most upset during the conference and simulation was that the government only gives 1% of their national budget to help out these people, but is willing to spend money effortlessly towards other things that I find unnecessary. If the government cuts this budget, people living in poverty will soon live in the streets so I hope the budget remains uncut.
Overwhelming. Stressful. Frightening. These were some of the words my fellow students used to describe the LEAP conference, and each of them fit extremely well. Experiencing the poverty simulation made me realize what some families go through every single day, and it is a rather difficult situation to be in. There are so many things to worry about when one is living within extreme poverty, and it seems close to impossible to pull oneself out of that sort of situation. It takes time, and unfortunately, most of these families in this kind of situation don't have much time at all. I never realized how one could just give up so easy and continue to live in poverty, but after the conference, I can see why that is very possible. The amount of things a starving, ill-stricken, and most importantly, poor family has to deal with on a regular occurrence. It is so easy to simply give up and start over somewhere else. Though I never have lived in extreme poverty at any point in my life, nor was the simulation a 100% accurate portrayal, I feel like I have a new respect for those who are less fortunate. The children in Kozol's book have lived in poverty all their life, and it is rather challenging for someone like me to picture that. During the simulation, I was a ten year old child, and after school, all I would do was come home and be bored. It is easier to see how poverty affects not just adults, but children as well. Their schooling, their family relationships, their whole lives are affected by something that was not even their fault. It is not like a child chooses to be born into poverty; it simply happens, and then they must deal with in any way they can. Its almost if a child who is born into a poverty stricken area has no hope later on down the road. The obstacles seem far to numerous and prevalent, that is is easy to see why some simply give up. Overall, the poverty simulation provided me with a slightly different perspective on how people who are poverty stricken life their lives, and a new understanding on the growing problem of poverty within in our own country. (Word Count 380).
This week we were exposed to a variety of scenarios and information about local and global poverty. The poverty made the biggest impression on me. In the simulation I was a working mother with and unemployed husband and 3 children, the oldest of which was expecting a child. I never had enough time to go to work, cash my check, and pay for all the things that needed to be paid for each week. I often did not have enough time, or money to buy food, so, at least the first week, my family didn’t have anything to eat, which lead to my children’s being malnourished. Then one of my kids ended up having to go to court, (an appointment we never made it to due to the lack of time and money), for trying to buy a gun. One of my children got caught trying to sell drugs to make extra money for the family. One of our cars broke down. We pawned all of our appliances, as well as a few that were not originally ours, to make extra cash. But the price of transportation kept rising, and time was constantly running out before we could get anything done. Throughout the entire simulation we were never able to make any payments on our mortgage, buy clothes, or make payments on our automobiles. Basically, we were the victims of bad luck, repeatedly. Granted there were a few things in the simulation that were slightly unrealistic. The bank and check cashing place kept running out of cash, so we were stuck with useless checks. But even if we had been able to cash our checks, and empty our savings, it is likely that we still would not have been able to cover all our costs and bills. This simulation was a real eye opener, because it showed me how helpless some people are. Many think people fall into poverty because of poor choices, but sometimes it’s just bad luck. It didn’t really matter how fast we ran, or how hard we worked, someone was always handing out red “life” cards, throwing us a curve ball that we were not prepared for. I really appreciate the coordinator of the Poverty Simulation coming back to Mercer because it gave me a glimpse of what living on my own and working to make ends meet is like, and how hard that could be. I’m in no hurry to move out and get married and have kids now. [414]
What do we take for granted in our socially adept life? How should the level of poverty be reduced?
I learned a few things when I went to the poverty simulation like how we take some of the little things in our lives for granted. There seems to be a sense of injustice that underlines the poverty. In fact, it was said that this poverty was at times not the fault of the poverty stricken citizens. Take for example the character I embodied during our experience: An old 85-year old woman whose husband died and left her nearly nothing of value so she ended up barely getting by with her retirement checks. Whether it is the inability or the non-compliant nature of the government, perhaps they should generate a larger source of retirement funds so that unnecessary poverty is avoided. At times, the citizens of a poor neighborhood delve so far deep into poverty that they have no other choice but to turn to crime in order to survive. According to Kozol, understandably or disagreeably so, there is a drive or a reason why there would be a situation like this to begin with and that is the lack of education. The source of all and what the poor lack. In the play Nickel and Dimed, when a writer for a column takes the role of an under-waged worker in order to study their lifestyle, she discovers the injustice and hardships they face such as not earning enough for the jobs they do and the numbers of jobs they have to take in order to sustain their families. This writer once noted that “the poorer you are the more expensive things get” (Nickel and Dimed, Barbara). She already had it good back in her private estate but her new friends had a hard time earning because the treatment they received from the boss just because of their social status. They were being taken advantage of just like the many poor victims of poverty. If there is something to be done let us start. Word count 340
What was your perspective of the poverty conference, and how did it compare to any of the works you have read on poverty?
The entire poverty conference in my opinion was a good series of events that really opened my eyes to the truth about poverty in our own country and around the world today. However, the poverty simulation in my opinion did the best in really showing me what a typical impoverished family must go through in order to simply survive. Although the time from was a bit unrealistic and made for a very hectic experience, the simulation as a whole really showed me all of the things that go on in a poor person's life. During the simulation, I experience firsthand many of the criminal acts that occur every day on the streets of an impoverished neighborhood. Many people fell victim to violence, while others turned to selling drugs in order to try to keep their families from starving and keep a roof above their heads. I also saw the impact that this environment had on children. Many children chose to skip school because they did not feel motivated to attend, while others who did attend school came home to an empty house which in turn caused them to partake in wrongful actions. On many occasions, children were taken to juvenile hall because of the things they did while being left unattended by their parents. This environment is eerily similar to many of the environments in “Savage Inequalities”, in which a majority of the children who went to school were not motivated to do well by their parents, and as a result the school systems in these areas suffered. Many of the students came to school unprepared because of a lack of structure in their homes, and thus they did poorly in school and were not able to graduate. The poverty simulation as a whole was a good experience for me, and it really showed me the hardships of living an impoverished life.
Is there ever going to be a time when poverty can be eliminated completely?
ReplyDeleteBesides raising attention and money what can we do?
The one activity that left a lasting impression on me was the poverty simulation. We may not have been able to experience the actuality of poverty but at some gut level through the simulation we could understand the desperation and struggles that these people go through everyday. For example, the desperation of not being able to make enough money to where you resort to prostitution, robbing banks at gun point, petty theft, or even selling drugs. My character that I was during the simulation was Lucy Locke, a 15 year old girl who was involved in sports and went to school and worked part time. She may have been involved in sports and enjoyed them but she certainly didn’t have time. I would go to school and after school I would go straight to work and after work I’d go home to my family and hand over my check. My money that I made went to helping the family, not to anything I may have wanted. In that way, Lucy was different from me. My senior year I went to school, did my extra- curricular activities, did homework, and worked part time. However, Lucy’s paycheck went to her family, my paycheck went to the gas I put in my car that my parents bought for me and for clothes that I wanted but didn’t need. Lucy didn’t get that option. One week I came home to find out we had been evicted from our home. Fortunately, we were able to pay our mortgage and get our home back but we didn’t eat very well that week. We were one of the lucky families however, we had one car paid off and another one we were paying loans on. We were able to keep our home and eat something at least every week. The next thing that left a lasting impression on me was the amount of good one percent of our budget does. That we can help that many people with that little amount of money is amazing and should be kept up.
Word Count: 366
This conference helped reinforce my ideas about what I have learned about poverty over the years. Going through the simulation I was able to see how some of my kids, that I take care of at camp, have grown up and what they go through on a regular day. It was so hard to sit there and know that there are children out there that live in a family where they are not able to have the normal things that we get everyday. I have one boy that I take care of at camp that has a little brother and they live with their grandfather. Their mother is no longer in the picture and their grandmother passed away last year. These two young boys both have trouble at school because neither of them have the attitude to keep them focused. They were also both affected by a school closing that now makes them ride a bus twenty minutes from their house to another school. Neither of them can do things after school because their grandfather cannot take them anywhere. They have no car; they walk to the grocery store. I know that these two boys have gone weeks where all they get to eat is what they get at school. It is so hard to know that there are little boys out there that have to become “little adults” and become twenty years older than they are. It was so hard to sit there and listen to them speak about families going through the same things around the world and our government wanting to cut the funding. Its hard to know that there are people here that cannot get funding from our government, and now the government does not want to keep the funding for other people around the world. I hope that the government will realize how much this 1% is a good thing, and it can help more than the people here.
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 324
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of the week at the LEAP conference, there have been many speakers and facts about poverty. While they were all important and relevant, the most impacting demonstration was the Poverty Simulation. It allowed me to have a first hand experience to realize the hardships that a family in poverty would experience. Just as we saw in Kozol’s novel, there is a clear difference in the lives of those who live in poverty. “’People on the outside […] don’t know’” what it is like for those in poverty because they have never had to live it (Kozol 104). It is one thing to read a story about the lives of people in poverty and to feel sympathy but until you live it, even in a simulation, it is impossible to experience empathy. The challenges that a person in poverty experiences are not even remotely understood to people who have never had to struggle to put food on the table for themselves and their children. The system is not geared to help the poor succeed but instead to keep them where they are. Big business and corporations focus on the bottom line and the money that goes in their pocket but when the population as a whole and not just those in suffering begin to complain then there is a chance for there to be a change in the system. When the issues of others begin to become issues for everyone then the change will come. It is when people want to change that people will change. Some people will focus on local poverty and others will focus on global poverty, but whatever the cause that someone takes it is still important to find something that is important to you and make a change for it. As long as people try then something will eventually try.
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 303
The LEAP poverty conference definitely related to ties made between the materials we’ve read as well as to past experiences that I have seen and interacted with poverty. The one event that I felt I related to the most was probably the wednesday morning lecture with Mr. Alphonse and the idea he tried to portray that there was more to do for the people who are impoverished than donate money. I thought the similar idea was shared with Shane Claiborne’s and shown how he directly interacted with the poor, but showed the little interactions and conversation between him and others were the driving force in helping people. I went on a mission trip to Guatemala my senior year of high school and I remember talking with my youth pastor and he spoke to me about how he had spoken with the pastor down there if it would be a better idea to send all the money saved up by not sending people down there and having to feed them for a whole two weeks, but Pastor Luis told my youth pastor that the money is not what helps these people; it’s the direct contact and love that people need in poverty. People can give hand outs of money, but what really helps those in poor conditions is love, someone to be there and comfort them or play with them and play with the kids. I will never forget those Guatemalan kids because of no matter how much they didn’t have, the joy they felt and showed when they were playing with us was the greatest thing I have ever seen. I believe the love God shares with us through Jesus is not only a salvation to save us from our wickedness, but to also bring out the pure in us with one another. The joy and purity those kids showed me while they were running around without shoes and food possibly helped me understand God and his love more than I could ever help them by giving them shoes or even helping them build a house for those same kids who were homeless.
ReplyDeleteword count: 353
The conference along with the poverty simulation definitely enlightened my ways of seeing how people living in poverty are like. For the longest time, I thought people should be grateful for everything that they have without complaining, while I was complaining about my life constantly. Through the conference and simulation, I began to reflect on my life and never have I been so grateful to be where I am at. I have the resources for a good education, the foundation support from my parents and good friends, professors willing to help, yet I’m complaining that my life sucks because I can’t have it my way all the time. The activity was more effective on me because I was actually living in their shoes for two hours without realizing that people live this way throughout their lives without complaining like I did. At first, it was a fun activity for me, but as my classmates and I participated longer, it became more stressful especially with all the restrictions. The character that I played was a 50 year old grandma who supports her family by working full time while babysitting her grandson, grand-daughter, and disabled husband. Throughout the activity, the hardest part was getting back to our “home” and cashing my check to pay all of the monthly bills. I couldn’t believe that I was only making approximately 9.00 an hour and I had so many bills to pay.
ReplyDeleteI have been working since I was sixteen, but it was more for my own desires rather than actually paying bills. I remember I racked up the phone bill to 1000.00 one time and my father made me pay back every penny because he had to make me realize that money doesn’t grow on trees and that I shouldn’t take things for granted. It took me about a month and a half to pay back the money for the phone bill, but I still didn’t really learn my lesson because I know my parents will always help me out. These people are not like me. They don’t have anyone that they can rely on financially, emotionally, and physically. The part that made me most upset during the conference and simulation was that the government only gives 1% of their national budget to help out these people, but is willing to spend money effortlessly towards other things that I find unnecessary. If the government cuts this budget, people living in poverty will soon live in the streets so I hope the budget remains uncut.
Word Count: 420
Overwhelming. Stressful. Frightening. These were some of the words my fellow students used to describe the LEAP conference, and each of them fit extremely well. Experiencing the poverty simulation made me realize what some families go through every single day, and it is a rather difficult situation to be in. There are so many things to worry about when one is living within extreme poverty, and it seems close to impossible to pull oneself out of that sort of situation. It takes time, and unfortunately, most of these families in this kind of situation don't have much time at all. I never realized how one could just give up so easy and continue to live in poverty, but after the conference, I can see why that is very possible. The amount of things a starving, ill-stricken, and most importantly, poor family has to deal with on a regular occurrence. It is so easy to simply give up and start over somewhere else. Though I never have lived in extreme poverty at any point in my life, nor was the simulation a 100% accurate portrayal, I feel like I have a new respect for those who are less fortunate. The children in Kozol's book have lived in poverty all their life, and it is rather challenging for someone like me to picture that. During the simulation, I was a ten year old child, and after school, all I would do was come home and be bored. It is easier to see how poverty affects not just adults, but children as well. Their schooling, their family relationships, their whole lives are affected by something that was not even their fault. It is not like a child chooses to be born into poverty; it simply happens, and then they must deal with in any way they can. Its almost if a child who is born into a poverty stricken area has no hope later on down the road. The obstacles seem far to numerous and prevalent, that is is easy to see why some simply give up. Overall, the poverty simulation provided me with a slightly different perspective on how people who are poverty stricken life their lives, and a new understanding on the growing problem of poverty within in our own country. (Word Count 380).
ReplyDeleteThis week we were exposed to a variety of scenarios and information about local and global poverty. The poverty made the biggest impression on me. In the simulation I was a working mother with and unemployed husband and 3 children, the oldest of which was expecting a child. I never had enough time to go to work, cash my check, and pay for all the things that needed to be paid for each week. I often did not have enough time, or money to buy food, so, at least the first week, my family didn’t have anything to eat, which lead to my children’s being malnourished. Then one of my kids ended up having to go to court, (an appointment we never made it to due to the lack of time and money), for trying to buy a gun. One of my children got caught trying to sell drugs to make extra money for the family. One of our cars broke down. We pawned all of our appliances, as well as a few that were not originally ours, to make extra cash. But the price of transportation kept rising, and time was constantly running out before we could get anything done. Throughout the entire simulation we were never able to make any payments on our mortgage, buy clothes, or make payments on our automobiles. Basically, we were the victims of bad luck, repeatedly. Granted there were a few things in the simulation that were slightly unrealistic. The bank and check cashing place kept running out of cash, so we were stuck with useless checks. But even if we had been able to cash our checks, and empty our savings, it is likely that we still would not have been able to cover all our costs and bills. This simulation was a real eye opener, because it showed me how helpless some people are. Many think people fall into poverty because of poor choices, but sometimes it’s just bad luck. It didn’t really matter how fast we ran, or how hard we worked, someone was always handing out red “life” cards, throwing us a curve ball that we were not prepared for. I really appreciate the coordinator of the Poverty Simulation coming back to Mercer because it gave me a glimpse of what living on my own and working to make ends meet is like, and how hard that could be. I’m in no hurry to move out and get married and have kids now.
ReplyDelete[414]
What do we take for granted in our socially adept life?
ReplyDeleteHow should the level of poverty be reduced?
I learned a few things when I went to the poverty simulation like how we take some of the little things in our lives for granted. There seems to be a sense of injustice that underlines the poverty. In fact, it was said that this poverty was at times not the fault of the poverty stricken citizens. Take for example the character I embodied during our experience: An old 85-year old woman whose husband died and left her nearly nothing of value so she ended up barely getting by with her retirement checks. Whether it is the inability or the non-compliant nature of the government, perhaps they should generate a larger source of retirement funds so that unnecessary poverty is avoided. At times, the citizens of a poor neighborhood delve so far deep into poverty that they have no other choice but to turn to crime in order to survive. According to Kozol, understandably or disagreeably so, there is a drive or a reason why there would be a situation like this to begin with and that is the lack of education. The source of all and what the poor lack. In the play Nickel and Dimed, when a writer for a column takes the role of an under-waged worker in order to study their lifestyle, she discovers the injustice and hardships they face such as not earning enough for the jobs they do and the numbers of jobs they have to take in order to sustain their families. This writer once noted that “the poorer you are the more expensive things get” (Nickel and Dimed, Barbara). She already had it good back in her private estate but her new friends had a hard time earning because the treatment they received from the boss just because of their social status. They were being taken advantage of just like the many poor victims of poverty. If there is something to be done let us start.
Word count 340
What was your perspective of the poverty conference, and how did it compare to any of the works you have read on poverty?
ReplyDeleteThe entire poverty conference in my opinion was a good series of events that really opened my eyes to the truth about poverty in our own country and around the world today. However, the poverty simulation in my opinion did the best in really showing me what a typical impoverished family must go through in order to simply survive. Although the time from was a bit unrealistic and made for a very hectic experience, the simulation as a whole really showed me all of the things that go on in a poor person's life. During the simulation, I experience firsthand many of the criminal acts that occur every day on the streets of an impoverished neighborhood. Many people fell victim to violence, while others turned to selling drugs in order to try to keep their families from starving and keep a roof above their heads. I also saw the impact that this environment had on children. Many children chose to skip school because they did not feel motivated to attend, while others who did attend school came home to an empty house which in turn caused them to partake in wrongful actions. On many occasions, children were taken to juvenile hall because of the things they did while being left unattended by their parents. This environment is eerily similar to many of the environments in “Savage Inequalities”, in which a majority of the children who went to school were not motivated to do well by their parents, and as a result the school systems in these areas suffered. Many of the students came to school unprepared because of a lack of structure in their homes, and thus they did poorly in school and were not able to graduate. The poverty simulation as a whole was a good experience for me, and it really showed me the hardships of living an impoverished life.
Word Count: 312