Linda Louis had to get to the bank. She tried to go late Friday afternoon, but it closed before she could get there. On Monday morning, she immediately left home for the bank. She didn’t even glance back as she left four-year-old Larry and three-year-old Lyn. She had to get to the bank and make her loan payment on her stove and couch or risk having them repossessed.

The 25-year-old single mother returned home just as her two sons were being taken into protective custody. They were too young to stay home alone, the officer explained.

“But my neighbors were watching them,” Ms. Louis explained, a hint of panic creeping into her voice as she looked to her neighbors to confirm her story. “Weren’t you watching them?”

The neighbors, perhaps afraid of becoming caught up in another family’s difficulties, said nothing as the children were taken away.

Welcome to the State of Poverty.

In real life, Linda Louis is a long-time employee of the Gwinnett County School District, as are her two “toddlers.” But on this warm summer day, she and more than 60 of her colleagues spent four hours experiencing what it’s like to pay the bills, take care of the kids and handle life’s curve balls when your monthly income isn’t enough to pay for child care for two toddlers plus the rent; when an older child gets into trouble with the law; or when a partner dies, leaving you alone with few job skills.

Overseeing the program is Sharon Gibson, an education program specialist with FACS who has been leading the “Welcome to the State of Poverty” simulations for six years.

“We’ve led all sorts of people through the simulation,” Gibson says. “One day, we led all of the teachers in the Morgan County School System through it, which meant holding four separate simulations. We’ve also had a number of simulations for leadership programs, for business leaders in some Georgia cities, and for social services caseworkers.”

In each case, Gibson says the goal is to connect or re-connect participants with what it’s like to live in poverty and to brainstorm strategies to address the impact of poverty on clients.

“Even long-time social workers will tell us after the simulation that they had lost touch with what their clients are going through,” she says. “When we worked with members of the Department of Juvenile Justice, they told us that the simulation reminded them that sometimes parents don’t make it to a hearing because they don’t have transportation or they really can’t miss work.”

The simulation begins with participants being divided into “families.” Families range from the traditional mother, father and two kids with both parents working to a single elderly person to a single-parent family.

“We’ve expanded our descriptions of families based on Georgia’s demographic profile,” Gibson says. “We now have more older people in our families. We also have a more diverse make-up – we have Latino and Asian families. Frequently, in our simulations, there are members of these families who speak no English and rely on the children to interpret for them – again, that’s reflective of some areas of our state.”

The simulation families are given “money” that reflects what families in poverty receive. The poverty level for a family of four is $18,850. They also are given food stamps and cards reflecting their possessions, such as a refrigerator, stereo and a few pieces of jewelry.

Gibson begins the simulation by explaining to the families that they must take care of the basics.

“You must pay your rent or you will be evicted,” she tells the group. “You must buy groceries for your family. If you have small children, you can’t leave them alone. Older children must be in school. You must pay your utilities. If you don’t have a job – and most of you don’t – you should go to the job office and see what’s available.”

For many participants, the poverty simulation begins as a game to be won, rather than an experience to be felt. Gibson laughs about the number of participants who spend their first “week” in poverty trying to write out a workable budget.

“I’ve had people come up to me after they’ve tried to write out budgets and say, ‘We don’t have enough money.’ And I’ll say, ‘Right, but you have to pay your bills and buy food.’ And they’ll just keep repeating it like I’m going to give them more money,” she says. “A lot of people start out thinking it’s just a matter of managing their resources. But it’s more than that, especially when ‘life’ happens.”

“Life” in the poverty simulation comes in the form of little cards occasionally handed to participants. In some cases, the cards bring good news: A new job for a parent. But mostly, “life” brings more difficulties: A teen-age daughter becomes pregnant; a parent abandons a family; a mother’s job is exported overseas.

But there are also those for whom the simulation is far too real. In some cases, participants, or their parents, triumphed over poverty and they hold onto the belief that others can also. In some cases, participants are living the scenarios.

“I had one participant who was playing the role of an out-of-work husband and she kept expanding the role,” Gibson recalls. “She began saying that her character drank and she became verbally abusive of her ‘wife’ and finally she broke down and left the room. When I asked her what was going on, she says, ‘This is my life.’ Her husband was out of work and was drinking too much and becoming verbally abusive. She wanted the other participants to experience just how terrible that was.”

“What’s important is that the simulation stimulates participants to think,” Gibson says. “For example, when the “toddlers” in the family are helping the parents decide how best to spend their income, I’ll point out that even though it’s not realistic to expect a three-year-old to know how to make a budget, it’s important to understand that when a family is struggling to make ends meet children sometimes are forced into adult roles at an early age.”

At the end of the day, Gibson’s goal is for the participants to come away with two lessons: First, there are no winners when it comes to poverty. Second, to begin thinking about what they can do to decrease the negative effects poverty has on the families in their community.

“When the Gwinnett County educators were here we talked about how poverty gets in the way of students being successful academically and what they could do about that,” Gibson says. “There were issues of non-English speaking parents, lack of transportation, work schedules. Then, we talked about what could be done: You can’t change parents’ work schedules and you can’t buy them cars, but the teachers did discuss changing the conferences to Saturdays and moving them to the work-sites of major employers. They also talked about visiting students’ homes and calling parents on the phone, rather than requiring face-to-face conferences.”

Gibson would like to believe the day will come when simulations are the only place people experience poverty, but she knows the reality is the state of poverty will continue to be home to too many Georgians.