The Poverty Simulation is a new tool available through NKCAC that provides low-income residents and community leaders with a forum to identify the issues, barriers and challenges that poor families face. It was developed by the Missouri Association of Community Action (MACA), and is in use nationwide.

Participants role-play the lives of low-income families and senior citizens, providing for their food, shelter and basic needs during an hour-long “month” in poverty. The simulation uses play money and fictitious (but realistic) scenarios to enable participants to view poverty from a unique perspective. The volunteers who represent bankers, employers, teachers, social service providers, police and business owners are low-income residents of the community. As participants and volunteers interact during the simulation and subsequent debriefing, the community as a whole becomes engaged in a dialogue about understanding the complicated issues surrounding poverty and working together to eliminate the parodox of poverty in the midst of plenty.

Poverty Simulations have the short term result of immediately raising awareness of poverty issues among participants. As one participant stated, the simulation “dramatically demonstrates how much time and energy many families have to give just to survive from day to day.”

This simulation is an excellent way to help employees, board members, community leaders, churches and civic organizations better understand the issues of poverty and opportunity. We guarantee that you will be forever changed. For more details about participating in an upcoming Simulation, or even scheduling a Poverty Simulation for your organization, please contact Jennifer Belisle, Director of Community Services at Northern Kentucky Community Action.

See the article from the Kentucky Enquirer on NKCAC's first Poverty Simulation, held May 31, 2007.

To download NKCAC's Poverty Simulation brochure, click here. (pdf file)

Listen to a compelling story about the Simulation that aired on National Public Radio.

For more facts about poverty in Northern Kentucky, click here.