Poor for a Weekend

This past Saturday I joined 30 high school students from my church for a poverty simulation.  The kids and adult leaders gathered on Friday night, at which point they were told that they were going to lose all of their possessions, other than two items (their sleeping bag counted as one of those two items).  They took off their own clothes and put on clothes from Goodwill.  They slept outside.  Their Saturday breakfast consisted of 1/2 of a cracker and 1/2 of a glass of lemonade.  Then they worked cleaning bathrooms and kitchens on Saturday morning.

By the time I showed up at Saturday at noon, the kids were tired, hungry, and dirty.

During the afternoon, we did a scavenger hunt around Pico Union, which is about 1 mile south of downtown Los Angeles.  Another leader and I were with four kids.  I was really impressed with the kids and how they were willing to dumpster dive, talk with folks they didn’t know, and even borrow money from strangers so they could have lunch.  Our group collected $2.25 and we bought a loaf of bread and peanut butter at the 99 cent store.  Best bread and peanut butter sandwiches ever.

I’ll post more about our group’s insights in the next few days, but let me say this for now:  the poverty simulation was the most meaningful inner city “work” I’ve ever done with kids.  Sure, they got a chance to do manual labor on Saturday morning, and I think that’s a good and important part of justice work.  But more importantly, they felt what it was like to be hungry, wandering the streets, looking for something to eat.  Those are very deep lessons.

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute