UMHB students participate in poverty simulation

BELTON—In the course of 28 hours, a group of University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students begged for food, dug through trashcans looking for aluminum cans and spent a night outdoors when temperatures hovered in the 40s as they participated in a poverty simulation on the Belton campus.

In conjunction with Missions Emphasis Week, the UMHB Baptist Student Ministry helped about 20 students experience what it’s like to live in poverty.

Senior nursing major Amber Schladoer, a co-director of the special events committee with the BSM, believed the poverty simulation conveyed an important message to students.

“We based a lot of our poverty simulation on one that some of the girls on our committee experienced with Mission Waco,” Schladoer said. “We did as much as we could do on campus.”

At orientation, students learned facts about poverty in the United States and around the world.

Sophomore mathematics major Evan Mullins arrived with a backpack filled with what he considered the essentials he would need for an overnight trip. He was surprised when he was told he couldn’t keep it all.

“They told us we could pick three items to keep,” Mullins said. “I chose to keep my jeans, my sweatshirt and my sleeping bag.”

Participants received $25 in “simulated welfare money” and had to choose how they would spend it. Items of clothing were $3 each, meals were $6, and rent to stay indoors for the night was $20.

Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays Email Address University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students huddle under blankets at the Sesquicentennial Plaza on the UMHB campus during a poverty simulation. (PHOTOS/Carol Woodward/UMHB)

Students were given a list of items to collect and things to do if they made it through the night. One task on the list was rummaging through trash for aluminum cans.

Students were asked not to tell anyone who asked that they were participating in a simulation, but to respond they had “fallen on tough times.” The committee wanted participants to be treated the same way anyone else rummaging through the trash would be treated.

Students were split into groups to keep each other company and motivate one another to complete the experience.

In each group, one person was selected at random to be homeless. The homeless could not keep any personal items, and they received no simulated money. They had no sleeping bags, toothbrushes or warm clothes, unless someone in their group decided to share.

In the middle of the night, UMHB police woke Mullins and his group and instructed them to move. After settling at another area for the night, participants were jarred from their sleep when a sprinkler system soaked them.

Freshman graphic design major Taylor Bela, a participant in the poverty simulation, said staying the night outside in the cold weather was difficult.

“I only had shorts on, so it was an intense experience,” Bela said.

She not only slept outside, but also spent part of a day in the campus dining hall asking other students for food.

“The hardest thing for me was having to ask other students for food,” Bela said.

“I feel like I should be able to provide for myself. I could go get a job and make money for myself, but in this situation I couldn’t.”

The poverty simulation was designed to help participants understand what poor people experience each day.

“It’s so hard,” Bela said. “A lot of times, we don’t think about how hard it would be, because we have the things we need. A lot of people don’t have those things, and they face these hardships every day. I can’t imagine how hard it is for them.”