Poverty simulation reminds public servants of the importance of empathy

Professions related to social services appeal to the empathetic, while the workload, particularly in communities with large struggling populations, can promote apathy. Elizabeth Bailey, outreach coordinator for United Way of Henry County and Martinsville, described it almost like a tug-of-war as she joined dozens of her colleagues on a recent morning in a program intended to make the game of tug-of-war a bit easier.

Poverty simulations are a growing trend in communities throughout the country, said Nicholette Antoniuk, a facilitator of one such Virginia-based program that made its way to Martinsville on Aug. 28. The Cost of Poverty, set up in Patrick and Henry Community College’s Stone Hall gym, gathered dozens of community-facing public servants, from police to social workers, and asked them to navigate the lived experiences of those they deal with every day.

Antoniuk described it as the ultimate exercise in empathy.

The program grouped participants in simulated families, each with their own unique financial hardships. Specific challenges, such as a lack of public transportation or limited income, were based on research into the surrounding community conducted by Think Tank, the organization behind the poverty simulations, according to Craig McCroskey, United Way’s director of financial stability programs and one of the event’s coordinators.

Using Henry County’s limited public transportation options as an example, McCroskey explained that organizers didn’t include bus transportation in the simulations and instead focused on walking and ride-sharing programs like Uber.

Antoniuk and her husband, Benjamin Antoniuk, travel to different communities to present the program. They brought it to the Henry County region thanks to organizations including the Virginia Department of Health and the Harvest Foundation.

[Disclosure: The Harvest Foundation is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy .]

“Each family has a unique set of circumstances,” McCroskey said, adding that the simulation is based on real information compiled by the event’s organizers. “These are real families, and they shared them with Think Tank. They built these simulations based on what these families experience in the community.”

In Henry County, 16.1% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to census data. That’s 1.3 times and 1.6 times the state and national rates, respectively, and it translates to about 8,000 out of a total county population of about 49,000. In Martinsville, that rate is 20.4%, according to Virginia Demographics data.

Bailey said empathy is a good takeaway, particularly considering the public-facing professions of most participants.

“I do the best that I can, at the end of the day,” Bailey said. “In our community … poverty is on the rise. I can’t imagine being a family and making under $40,000 and maybe not getting assistance, maybe not understanding or getting access to assistance. I worked with a lot of [the participating organizations], and they do reach deep into communities. But I think this definitely helped with empathy.”

Bailey and other participants went through a crash course in handling daily household tasks with poverty as a primary hurdle. Their “families” were tasked with surviving for a month, or 60 minutes in simulated time.

“By week three, there are a lot of emotions that start hitting,” Antoniuk said, adding that it isn’t unusual for participants to break down or become agitated by the end of the simulated month. “By that time, we take them out of the simulation to help them regulate and get them back in if they want to finish it. By the end of week four, there are people just sitting in their chair waiting for the time to finish so they can get back to their real lives.”

Some families survived the month, while others faced various fates, including evictions.

“You have bills that are due, you have housing that is due at the beginning of the month,” Antoniuk said. “Utilities have to be done at a certain point. You might get instructions to go to a bank to handle things there. If someone is sick, you have to go to a health center. You might have a kid that you have to get to school. It really simulates real life.”

Antoniuk said that while these experiences may not be foreign to participants, it puts into perspective how everyday tasks are complicated by poverty.

“It’s meant to start a conversation,” Antoniuk said, adding that the ultimate goal of the exercise is to help people see past their biases.

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