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A BRIEF DESCRIPTION FOR VOLUNTEERS

THE SIMULATION EXPERIENCE

The refugee simulation experience is designed to help participants begin to understand what it might be like to live as a family arriving through the refugee program or as a typical low-income family trying to survive from month to month. It is a simulation, not a game. The object is to sensitize participants to the realities faced by people who arrived as refugees and low-income people.

In the simulation, up to 126 participants assume the roles of up to 30 different families facing poverty. Some families are newly arrived, some have been here for 1, 30, or 90 days or one year. The task of the “families” is to provide for basic necessities and shelter during the course of four 15-minute “weeks.”

The simulation is conducted in a large room with the “families” seated in groups in the center of the room. Around the perimeter are tables representing community resources and services for the families. These services include a bank, super center, Community Action Agency, employer, utility company, pawn broker, grocery, social service agency, faith-based agency, payday and title loan facility, mortgage company, school, community health center, and daycare center.

Volunteers, preferably persons who have experience with the refugee resettlement process or who have immigrated to the US themselves, are recruited to staff the resource tables.

The experience lasts about two and a half to three hours. It includes an introduction and briefing, the actual simulation exercise, and a debriefing period in which participants and volunteer staffers share their feelings and experiences and talk about what they have learned about the lives of people in poverty.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF VOLUNTEER STAFFERS Persons recruited as volunteer staffers are asked to think about the role they have chosen to fill. Staffers may have had personal experiences that enable them to be especially effective in portraying a given role. Realistic portrayals contribute greatly to the success of the experience. It is a challenge for students to understand this as a simulation rather than as a game, and the more realistic the portrayal, the more likely students are to take the experience seriously and see it as an exercise in empathy rather than as a game.

The following staffers are essential and must be staffed for every simulation: police officer, utility collector, pawnbroker, grocer, mortgage/rent collector, Quik Cash manager, two social service caseworkers, a social service receptionist, Refugee Resettlement Staffer, translator, employer, daycare worker, schoolteacher, faith-based agency staffer, community health care staff, and bank/loan collector. The caseworkers will need to have some command of pertinent facts and information. Familiarity or experience with a local social service office is highly desirable. If possible, the Community Action worker should be someone who has had real-life experience in this role.

At the end of the simulation, staffers will be asked to comment on the simulation experience. This could include a summary of how the participants reacted to the staffer’s role, comments about the participants’ ability to cope in the State of Poverty during this “month,” previous experiences or special information or facts which the staffer may have that could reinforce the realities of living in poverty, how it feels for the staffer to be “on the other side of the table” during this simulation, and whether or not there was a perceptible change of attitude on the part of the participants during the simulation.