Reading my name tag once more, I plastered it on my chest and stepped into my new role: “Amy Franklin.” Instead of my cozy home with my three siblings where I was about to graduate high school, I was thrust into a volatile living situation. 11 years older, I was now homeless. My mother was no longer a bright source of livelihood for our family but in an elderly care facility. Instead of siblings, I now had a 4-year-old in foster care and was on the brink of losing visitation rights because of unemployment and homelessness. I figured that I would come out on the other end of the simulation with a job, place to live, and visitation rights for my child, but little did I know that the world of Amy Franklin was much different than my world.
Turning the paper over in my hand, there were no clear instructions. I did the next thing I knew to do: I asked around. “Do you know where I can find a job?” I asked the other people living in poverty. They all had the same answer: “I don’t know;” “No idea;” or the occasional shrug. I took it up a notch and went up to the staff of the different social service offices. Rude and dismissive, none of them had an answer. Lines were growing longer by the minute. I stood in lines all day just to hear when I arrived at the front of the line that they had closed, were no longer hiring, or whatever other excuse that resulted in my day being futile.
By day two, I realized the real problem with the simulation and with living in poverty. It was less about not having financial resources and more about the gross misinformation that people who live in poverty face. I stopped trying to get Amy Franklin out of her dire situation and began to explore the inequities in the system. All the jobs offered were not steady sources of income. The ones that were, required things that the people in the simulation did not have: degrees, connections, time, amongst many more things.
I began to talk to other people who were living in poverty about what their situations were. One of them qualified for housing assistance but could not secure the assistance because they did not have a social security card. This person spent all 4 days of the simulation looking for a social security card; when they finally got one, they stood in the line for social security until the simulation was over. I thought about how when I wanted to get my permit, I went online and looked up the steps to secure my license and was able to do that without a hitch. Many people who live in poverty lack information and have no means to get that information. The people they live with tend to be in similar situations: all lacking the resources they need to escape a system built against them.
Walking away from the simulation, I was overwhelmingly aware of the dangers of misinformation and walked away with a deepened sense of compassion for those living in poverty. Today, when I hear people blaming those living in poverty for their conditions, I have learned to tune them out because they are just as uninformed as the people they criticize. Whether it’s knowledge on how to secure resources available to you, or information on the societal factors at play, it’s up to me to help spread the little knowledge I have as I learn.
–Christine Gibson is a Senior at Round Rock Early College High School in Round Rock, Texas