WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) - Nutrition officials hope a new poverty demonstration will show Indiana community leaders and healthcare providers what it's like to be poor.
In the "Reality of Poverty" simulation, participants assume the roles of families facing poverty. They are challenged to provide for basic needs such as food and shelter on a limited budget for four "weeks," each of which lasts 15 minutes during the simulation.
In the first place, a "simulation" won't give these "leaders" the first idea about what it means to be poor. To really understand the condition, you need the terrifying uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring, not the knowledge that when the exercise is over you get to go back to your comfortable middle class lifestyle.
And in the second place, all they need to know about poverty is that it sucks, which is why people try to escape it. And, hell, I could have
