Picture this: Emily is a 34-year-old single mom with two teenagers: Ed, age 17, and Ellen, 14. A high school dropout who worked as a sales clerk until she had children, she recently was deserted by her husband who left her with $10 in cash and nothing in the bank.

Living in a three-room apartment in a low-income neighborhood, she pawns her TV and stereo, but "Big Dave," the pawn-broker, gives her only half of what they are worth and she uses one of her only two bus tickets to get to his shop.

She needs to pay a utility bill before service is cut off, but the utility office is closed for a holiday -- a fact Emily doesn't learn until she has used her last bus ticket to get there.

The forms she needs to fill out for welfare benefits are complicated and time-consuming, and no one is available to help her navigate them. The employees at a the Community Action office appear sympathetic but have no real solutions to her problems.

While she tries to figure out how to stabilize her home, her son is suspended from school, but she has no time to deal with that. Within a month, she finds herself sickened to think she is thankful for the money her daughter is bringing home from her new boyfriend, a drug dealer.

Emily can't believe the fix she's in as she hovers on the edge of hunger and homelessness.

What would you do if you were in Emily's shoes?

That was the question recently asked of Janine Kennedy as part of a poverty sensitivity program especially aimed at those who deal with people living in poverty and on the edge of homelessness. Ms. Kennedy is director of Butler County's Community Action, a pass-through office for government subsidies directed to agencies that deal with poverty, homelessness and illness.

She took part in the sensitivity program -- essentially a simulation of one month in the life of a struggling family -- to prepare for Homeless Awareness Month in August.

Homeless Awareness Month is sponsored by the county's Local Housing Options Team, made up of about two dozen agencies, including Community Action, Catholic Charities, the Lighthouse Foundation, the Veterans Affairs hospital, the Salvation Army and the county housing authority.

Though Ms. Kennedy works directly with the county-sponsored programs that help the weakest in the community, she found herself stumped and frustrated when she stepped into the role of Emily as part of a new program that seeks to sensitize people to those barely hanging onto shelter.

"I found myself wanting to sit down and cry when I finished it," said Ms. Kennedy, who is offering the community a chance to participate in the simulation workshop at 12:30 p.m. Aug. 7 at Trinity Lutheran Church off Route 8 in Center, just north of Clearview Mall.

The program is a "window into another person's life," Ms. Kennedy said. It involves details such as monthly income and bills and randomly assigned "luck-of-the-draw cards" that bring into the lives of the recipients such circumstances as a plumbing problem, sickness or death in the family, a utility rebate, a lottery win. The participant "walks" in those shoes in 15-minute intervals that re-create a week. Certain tasks must be completed, such as obtaining food. The experience will include four intervals, simulating a month in a poor family's life. There will be a number of walk-in-my-shoes scenarios.

"The whole point is to engage participants in real life situations that a lot of people in poverty face to gain understanding of what [the poor are] really up against. I think people will learn that there is a lot that we take for granted," Ms. Kennedy said.

Participants will be randomly assigned to family groups upon arrival. Volunteers associated with sponsoring nonprofit agencies will man various stations, ranging from a pawn shop to a utility office to a welfare office.

The purpose of Homeless Awareness Month in Butler County is to shine a spotlight on what the experts call the "hidden homeless" of rural areas.

"In the city, you can see people sleeping under bridges and over grates. In rural areas like Butler County, they are more hidden: they're couch hopping, living in a tent in the woods, sleeping in a car," Ms. Kennedy said.

Equally important is to heighten community awareness of those living on the "fringe of the pit," as she puts it. "They're the ones surviving day to day, just making it. It would take just one minor life experience to knock them off track and into the pit of homelessness."

Participants must register in advance, but the program is free. It can accommodate 72 people. To register, e-mail Ms. Kennedy at akennedy@co.butler.pa.us or call 724-284-5125.

Other activities in August, in addition to the poverty simulation, include:

The Veterans Affairs-Butler Health Care hospital will host a networking forum for agencies that deal with those at risk for homelessness to discuss community resources. It will be held from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. next Thursday at the VA hospital auditorium. It's free but reservations are requested at 1-800-362-8262, Ext. 2439.

A fundraiser that involves volunteers sleeping in a simulated "shantytown" will be held from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Aug. 7 at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Collections of money, food and personal supplies will be taken at the following locations: Wednesday at the Slippery Rock Giant Eagle; Aug. 12 at the Butler Wal-Mart; and Aug. 19 at Friedman's grocery store in Saxonburg. The hours on each date will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.