Reflection on A Framework for Understanding Poverty

This piece provides a multi-faceted model of understanding for the concept of poverty and the fact that it isn't all one-sided. It also acknowledges some of the facts and mindsets of how people in different situations think of solutions to the problems they face. So many factors play into it, and relationships they form are a primary one. If people are in (as the article puts it) the middle or wealthy class, or otherwise in a position of authority like [for example] a teacher, they ought to know how to interact with people in poverty in a way that is as conducive to acceptance and understanding as possible. It is understanding the mindsets of those in poverty, how they would think of solutions rather than how someone of different means would think of a solution. While most people consider "poverty" they think mostly of financial troubles, sometimes of familial problems, sometimes of levels of education in a harmful and stereotypical sense, not as much about mental or emotional stability or what contributes to instability, and reliable transportation. While money and money management play big roles, it's difficult to think as a person of means, how a person in poverty would truly manage all the resources that they have, including the relationships they form with others.

During the poverty simulation, college students and people who work with the Community Action Council and other nonprofits took on roles of people who do live in poverty. The roles that people took on were, to an extent, much more culturally diverse than those who were truly present. Every situation was thought through by participants based on the mindsets that we came in with as college students and employees. I, as a spectator who walked around recording things that were happening, watched people make decisions with those minds because while we can theoretically imagine the tangible ways in which an impoverished person might go about life finding tangible resources like money and transportation, they cannot truly know what the people who they were personifying would have done in that situation. This is because we are not a part of the shared history of that family, a part of that background, we have not had our minds affected by the kind of past they might have had, and we certainly might not know the relationships we might have with those of our own family. Hunter, who we interviewed after the simulation, was playing a 17-year-old and his character resorted to a drug deal in order to make money and then almost promptly told the woman playing his mother about it. He said during the interview that it didn't feel realistic that his character would tell his mother something like that so openly.