“The City of Highland Park is partnering with the Alliance for Human Services, Family Focus, Moraine Township, and the Highland Park Community Foundation to host a poverty simulation event to increase residents’ understanding and awareness of what it is like to live in poverty in Lake County. The simulation will be held on Saturday, September 9, 9:00 – 11:30 AM at the Highland Park Country Club (1201 Park Ave. W.) “
Participants in this immersive experience will begin to experience what a “month” in poverty feels like. Participants are put into situations in which they do not have enough resources and are forced to make difficult choices that can negatively impact them and their families. The outcome is increased awareness of the need for resources to support those living in poverty to create a more resilient health, human, and education sector in our local area. Participation is free, but registration is required.” (City of Highland Park/Facebook)
This event is being organized/sponsored by the Alliance for Human Services, Family Focus, Moraine Township, Highland Park Community Foundation, and Highland Park.
In the realm of you just cannot make this s**t up. Imagine, if you will, groups of suburbanites wiling away a few pleasant hours in their wealthy suburb pretending to spend a month in poverty. Gee, some may even give up an afternoon of golf at their exclusive clubs to play poor people. They will pretend to make choices with few resources to experience what it is like to live in poverty. Oh, how f**king noble.
Are they going to pretend to live in substandard housing in a food desert? Are they going to pretend what it’s like when there is more month at the end of the money? Will there be screaming hungry children driving them mad? Will they unleash their experienced anger on their loved ones?
I read about and took part in some of these ridiculous games. Games are what they are. They are not educational and are meaningless. Some are fun. Poverty is anything but fun. I worked in impoverished neighborhoods as a police officer. I saw poverty as close-up as you can get on a daily basis. No game or make-believe can replicate living in poverty, especially when you show up wearing your designer clothes, jewelry, and drive up in your expensive car.
Afterwards, they can go to some fancy restaurant or cocktail lounge and discuss their “experience” while sipping fine wine and eating gourmet food. Yeah, they will have an “increased awareness” alright. By the next day, they will go on with their coddled lives as usual.
This is proof there are suckers born every minute. A friend summed this up very well on Facebook.
“UNBELIEVABLE! What a bunch of frauds! You’ll all go to this event (So you can feel better about yourselves and PRETEND you experienced poverty) Then you’ll go back to your upper middle-class homes and sit in the backyard sipping Cosmopolitans lamenting how “Those People” live like that every day! THIS IS POSITIVELY OBSCENE AND GROSS.“
*Less-on is lower than a moron