Approximately 30 percent of Californian families do not earn enough to pay for basic needs. Many of them are struggling with inadequate resources and are forced to make hard choices between hunger, housing and health care. Although often described as, "falling through the cracks" this group is neither small nor marginal but rather, it's a substantial proportion of our society and yet little is known about the challenges and difficulties they face.
To build awareness of the facts and to fight poverty more effectively, Catholic Charities of California launched Step Up California, Campaign to Cut Poverty in September of 2009. A coalition of organizations is working to educate legislative members and staff about poverty and self-sufficiency. As part of that effort, Step Up is sponsoring a poverty simulation workshop at the state capitol on February 3.
The simulation is a unique tool that illustrates the day-to-day realities of life with a shortage of money and an abundance of stress. During the simulation, participants role play the lives of low-income families trying to maintain their self-sufficiency. The poverty simulation workshop can open people's eyes to the human cost of poverty. This unique learning resource creates, like no other method, an insight into the state of chronic crisis that consumes so many working poor families.
Check out www.stepupca.org for more information.
-P.I. Perez
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