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Connecting Experience
Goal 1 – No Poverty
Nearly half of the world lives in poverty today, and so many people struggle for basic human needs like adequate food and clean water. Eliminating poverty is about giving all people everywhere an equal chance at living fulfilled lives.
Tasks
What is poverty?
Wake up points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 5+ |
Time: 20 – 30 minutes
Objective:
To learn about the different types of poverty, and discuss the different effects it can have.
Material:
Scenarios printed/written out before meeting.
Instructions:
Begin by starting a discussion with the group about poverty as a whole, the leader could have the group offer up words or ideas they associate with it and create a mind map.
Explain to the group that poverty comes in many forms, and differs from person to person and country to country.
Define Absolute, Relative and Situational Poverty.
Absolute Poverty
- Also known as extreme poverty, Absolute poverty is a lack of all basic human needs such as food, shelter, clean drinking water and medical access. Generally, the threshold is the same worldwide.
Relative Poverty
- Relative Poverty differs from place to place, people in relative poverty can usually reach a basic level of survival but might not have the same quality of life or opportunities as those around them. E.g. This could be a family not being able to afford to send children to college that live in a place where generally everyone has this opportunity.
Situational Poverty
- Situational poverty can be sudden but is usually temporary. This is when an unexpected event puts a family below the poverty line, this could happen for several different reasons such as job loss, a natural disaster or illness.
Once the leader has discussed the different forms of poverty, split into small groups and give them a set of scenarios. Give them the task of deciding which scenario depicts which kind of poverty. There are 3 scenarios provided below, but feel free to adapt them or to add more depending on the group.
Scenario 1
Anna is ten years old. Her family lives in hostels and sometimes must spend the nights sleeping on the streets. She would like to go to school but needs to spend the day trying to get money to help feed her family.
Scenario 2
Marco goes to school every day. After school, all his friend go to soccer practice. Marco really wants to play soccer with his friends, but his parents don’t have enough money to pay for it.
Scenario 3
Sara’s house was destroyed by a wildfire. Her family are living in a house with a friend’s family. It’s very crowded and hard to find space for themselves. They hope they’ll get a new house soon.
Debrief:
- What could you do to help someone in poverty?
- In a perfect world, what would you do to be sure that no one lived in poverty?
Decisions! Decisions!
Wake up points
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 30 minutes – 1 hour
Objective:
To learn about the different forms of poverty.
Material:
None required but you could make signs of each of the six forms of poverty.
Instructions:
Ask participants what they think is meant by the term poverty.
Explain that poverty can be split into 6 categories:
- Situational poverty (usually temporary and involves a crisis or loss occurring, for example, health problems, natural disaster, divorce)
- Generational poverty (When two generations are born into poverty and might not have the resources to get out)
- Absolute poverty (lack of necessities such as food, water and shelter)
- Relative poverty (where family income is not enough to maintain an average standard of living in their country)
- Urban poverty (found in metropolitan areas with populations over 50,000 where overcrowding, violence, noise and poor community help programs make it harder for people to escape poverty)
Rural poverty (where limited services available for those in need of financial assistance and lack of job opportunities makes the problem worse).
Game:
Assign a type of poverty to six different spaces in the room. Leader reads the scenario and then participants run to the space that they think is the answer.
Have participants explain the choices they made.
We have included ideas for scenarios below, you can add additional ones tailored to your participants experience and understanding:
- Philip lives in the countryside and due to floods the only road to his work is now blocked and extremely damaged, he can no longer get to work and get paid for the next 2 months. What form of poverty is affecting him?
- A young girl and her mother in Thailand are homeless and are forced to beg for money to survive. This is normal for the mother as she has never had a home. What kind of poverty affects them?
- Yan lives and works in Norway with his family but even though he has a full-time job he still struggles to pay rent and buy enough food for his family and is having to get financial aid from the government. What kind of poverty affects him?
Debrief:
- Which type of poverty do you think affects your community the most?
- Which one do you think is the hardest one to fight?
- What is something you could do to help fight poverty?
Poverty around you
Look around points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 1 -2 hours
Objective:
To learn what kind of poverty there is in your area.
Material:
n/a
Instructions:
Get in contact with an organisation in the area that is working to help people in poverty. Invite someone from the organisation to come and talk to the participants about the work they’re doing.
Encourage participants to ask questions to learn about the organisation and what it’s doing to help in the area, who the volunteers are, why they do what they do, how you can help them.
If you’re doing the ACT! Project from this section, you can use this talk to discuss ways your group can help the organisation and create a plan for your action project.
Is Poverty here?
Look around points
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 30 minutes up to 1 hour
Objective:
To talk about what kind of poverty there might be in their area and who is there to help.
Material:
Paper, pens
Instructions:
Split participants into small groups and have them discuss what types of poverty there are in their local area and to write down what they think.
Then have them think about what can be done to help and what groups there are in their area that can help.
Have the group come together at the end to share the different thoughts they have.
Debrief:
- Why do you think that kind of poverty exists where we live?
- What do you think could be done to help the situation?
Collection Challenge
ACT points
| Age Group: 7+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 2 – 4 weeks
Objective:
To do something to help people in poverty in their community with what the current needs are.
Material:
Boxes/containers to collect things in, paper, markers
Instructions:
Have participants choose a local charity such as a foodbank, women’s shelter or homeless aid. If there are no such charities in their area, they could set up a space in their meeting hall or town centre where people in need can access what they’ve collected.
Once they’ve chosen a group, get in contact to find out what materials the charity needs or see what the community is in need of which you can help with.
Choose places in their area where people gather and set up collection points, these could be in your meeting place, schools, markets, anywhere that has a lot of people.
Have participants create posters or social media posts to encourage people to make donations at one of their collection points.
Combine everything and donate it to their chosen charity.
Raise awareness of the charity after they complete their collection challenge, encourage people to make donations whenever they can, not just during the event.
Note for Leaders: Please enquire with local Authorities on how best to assist and follow the laws, policies and procedures necessary to fulfil this challenge.
ACT! For your community
ACT points
| Age Group: 11+ | Amount of people: 3+ |
Time: 2 – 4 weeks
Objective:
To help people in poverty in their community.
Material:
n/a
Instructions:
In groups, have participants research local charities and organisations and choose one to work with. If not possible, participants could create their own initiative.
Participants should create their own action to support that charity/idea, some suggestions are:
- A soup run or helping serve in a soup kitchen
- Holding a clothes collection for a homeless charity
- Collecting sanitary products for a women’s refuge
- Run a workshop to teach useful skills based on their charity or own idea
- Raise awareness of the current situation locally and worldwide
Encourage participants to take all the necessary steps in planning their action, including:
- Contacting the charity/group their idea is aimed to help
- Developing their idea and coming up with the necessary steps to achieve their goal
- Create a plan for how to continue their work after the event
- Making their own schedule etc.
