V.W.H. Campbell, Post-Gazette Carmela Senior of the North Side Community Alliance, plays a grandmother, who cannot afford eyeglasses for her 9 year-old son, who she argues with at right, played by Greg Kaminski of P.S.V.P. University of Pittsburgh is doing a poverty simulation at the William Pitt Union ballroom to show people what it would really feel like to struggle to make ends meet.

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette As she sat waiting in the reception area of the fictional Department of Family Services, Monique Knight sighed and said, "I hope and pray I never have to live like this."

She was playing Emily, a 31-year-old mother of two whose father had walked out.

In the ballroom of the William Pitt Student Union in Oakland, Ms. Knight and about 100 others spent yesterday morning learning the lessons in which the poor are immersed.

Pittsburgh Social Venture Partners staged the 45-minute poverty simulation. The organization is one of 23 in the nation that seek next-generation philanthropists for social-service giving.

Terry Beggy, its executive director, warned at the outset not to treat it as a game. He said the intensity of the three, 15-minute sessions would elicit a sense of the frustration that years of poverty inculcate. "This is as real as we can make it so that you will have the visceral and emotional reactions people have" to living in poverty.

Ms. Knight's Emily was left with $10, no money in the bank, a 15-year-old daughter, Ellen, and a 14-year-old son, Ed. She stood in interminable lines -- to apply for welfare, to apply for a job. She filled out forms, waited too long to see a caseworker, tried to figure out how best to spend the little money they had and sent her son to pawn the stereo.

Grace Kaminski, a student at Quaker Valley High School, played Ed. Ellen was Kristin Cassidy, a University of Pittsburgh student who participates in Americorps' Jump Start, an agency that works with pre-kindergarten children.

Throughout the ballroom, chairs arranged in small circles served as home to the gamut of family groupings. There were women playing 9-year-old boys, 20-year-old Pitt students playing grandfathers. A big yellow rope that the children held on to was the school bus.

Every family got a packet that included a few transit passes, some play cash, cards that represented pawnables and a history of the family they would portray. Along the walls, tables manned by role players served as a school, bank, Family Services, employment center, pawn shop, quick-cash mart, superstore, day-care center, jail and utility payment office. One role player was a policeman, another a drug pusher.

The family members would run into opportunities, some to do better, some to abase themselves, based on the variety of roles assigned.

"Mom, I'm hungry," said Ed in their home after the first week of school.

"I have five dollars," Emily told the kids, assuring them they would have more once she could get her application for assistance processed.

"We could go to Arby's and get a 5-for-$5 deal," said Ellen.

Emily admonished her son for fighting and asked him, "What are you going to do the whole week" of suspension?

"Maybe find my dad."

When the kids were in school, Emily took the bus to wait in a long line at Family Services, but the first 15-minute session was over before she could get a form to fill out. During the next session, waiting to see a caseworker, she abruptly rose and said, "I have to get food." She was waiting in line at the superstore when that session was over.

At the next session, an excited Ed found his mother waiting to see a caseworker at Family Services and cried out proudly, "Mom, I sold the TV for $45."

"Oh," she said, wincing. "That's not enough."

"But Mom," Ed wheedled, waving the money at her, "we can eat."

When the beginning of session three was announced, Emily leapt to her feet to get in line at Family Services, just six feet away, but she was shoved back by the fifth person in line.

Jean Olivins, playing Quentin, waited to apply at Family Services with his 3-year-old son, Kirby, played by Sara Werner, who works at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Stepping out of character for a moment, Ms. Werner said, "It's amazing how people have assumed these roles."

Ms. Olivins works for the nonprofit Communities in Schools and said she sees children behaving badly under the duress of home lives much like the ones being simulated. "This is real. This is so real."

When Ms. Beggy tried to get order at the end of the last session, the room was still abuzz with families plotting strategies. Emily was telling Ed and Ellen, "I should utilize you guys more, but it's not fair that you should have to go out and do what I'm doing."

They were still her kids, looking at her with worried brows, when the voice over the microphone caught their attention.

"Is it over?" asked Ms. Cassidy, shedding Ellen with relief.

"What did you think?" Ms. Knight asked her.

They were both wide-eyed.

"Pretty hard."

In a feedback session, participants called out immediate feelings: "Stressed out." "Inadequate." "Frustrated."

"I felt like a bad parent."

"I was 9 and I was nervous and worried."

"I was 9 and I felt neglected."

"I always wondered why people would use those quick-cash places. Now I know."

"It was easy to start taking advantage of the chaos."

"I faced compromises: What was I going to skip doing?"

"School doesn't prepare you for these things. I go to Pitt and I didn't know anything about social services."

"We started looking for ways around the system instead of continuing to be frustrated by it."

"I missed a sense of community."

"One of my neighbors dropped money and I put it in my pocket," said a man who had played a single father of two. Glancing quickly at the money-dropper, he said, "Sorry about that."