By Sheldon Spackman

Creating better insight into poverty in Red Deer

Oct 18, 2018 | 11:30 AM

Dozens of RDC students and local service providers had a unique opportunity Wednesday to experience what it’s like to live in poverty in Red Deer.

For the sixth-straight year, the Central Alberta Poverty Reduction Alliance (CAPRA) teamed up with the Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Network (WIC) and United Way of Central Alberta to host a poverty simulation at Festival Hall in hopes of creating a better understanding and awareness of what challenges our city’s less fortunate face each day.

The event coincides with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty recognized globally on October 17 each year.

Lori Jack, community impact officer with the United Way of Central Alberta says it’s a simulation where people experience a month in the life of someone living in poverty in Red Deer but condensed into a much smaller time frame.

“They’re all working people but it’s just they’re having a hard time making the month and covering all the costs of their bills,” explains Jack. “It’s a pretty powerful experience and in a little more than an hour, they experience an entire month and they’re left learning and discovering just how hard it is to not have enough money, how hard you have to work and how carefully you have to plan and how incredibly stressful it is at all times during that month.”

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Jack hopes those who took part take away a better insight into what challenges those living in poverty are currently facing.

“It’s been really powerful to watch it happen where people start walking away and saying, ‘Hey, maybe we should do this differently because I didn’t realize the food bank is only open three days a week in a smaller community’, they start thinking differently about how they do services,” states Jack. “Reducing poverty isn’t always about more investment, it sometimes is just that we do things differently and be able to come together as a community and trying to understand it from another person’s perspective.”

Monica Morrison, executive director at the Golden Circle and CAPRA spokesperson, says there were 60 people who registered, along with 20 volunteers who participated from various service organizations, the City of Red Deer, public school district and general members of the public.

“It’s all about working together and collaborating,” says Morrison. “One thing that stood out for me being from an organization that provides services is the lack of knowledge that the various organizations had about what was happening in their community. So I’m going to take that away and kind of look at, ‘OK, do we all know what’s happening in our community and are we sending people to the right places?’, those are the conversations as organizations we should be having.”

Wednesday’s poverty simulation event is also part of the international ‘Chew On This’ campaign, a nation-wide initiative aiming to draw attention to poverty in Canada by calling for action through a national plan to end poverty.

CAPRA member Harrison Blizzard says it’s the third year the ‘Chew On This’ campaign has been highlighted in the city of Red Deer.

“This year there are 900 communities across the nation doing it, passing out roughly 20,000 bags,” states Blizzard. “The idea behind it is we’re using food in security as the avenue to talk about poverty. So what this event is for is to help somebody identify a way to communicate with the prime minister to talk about the need for a strategy to help reduce poverty in our country.”

Blizzard says the federal government did release a strategy to better address poverty last year but adds the goal now is to get them to act on it.

“What we have in our bags is an apple that was donated by the Central Alberta Co-op and the Sobeys south on Gaetz,” he explains. “An apple inside, a postcard for people to write their name, city and postal code and then send it off to prime minister Justin Trudeau to help spread that message. We’re hoping that with the 20,000 bags we’re giving out across the nation, the prime minister will receive 20,000 postcards that ask for them to actually act on their strategy for poverty.”

Blizzard adds The Hub on Ross Street also handed out apples in collaboration with Wednesday’s poverty simulation event.

According to the event’s partnering organizations, roughly 11,500 Red Deerians, including 2,300 children are estimated to live in poverty in our community.