Each fall IWU students are invited to participate in the Cost of Poverty Experience (COPE); hosted by the Interprofessional Education Task force, in partnership with Circles of Grant County. The task force is made up of faculty from several of the health caring professions, including nursing, social work, education, ministry, and occupational therapy. The poverty simulation is a medium for experiential education. Participants experience the realities of living in poverty. In the COPE simulation, participants are assigned a role within unique family scenarios that were built from real stories. Over the course of an hour, participants inhabit their role and seek to live well and provide for themselves and their families for the simulated time frame. There are a variety of community resources the participants must visit in order to navigate the experience – from an employer, bank, to a health clinic, pawnshop, and grocery store. This simulation provides IWU students the opportunity to expand their learning and see the value of interprofessional collaboration in holistically serving and caring for their clients. One objective of the COPE is to give participants a greater appreciation for the complexity of poverty. When you are an external observer to the culture of poverty, it’s easy to assume you would make “better” decisions if you were in the same circumstance. However, participants experience the intricacies and deficiencies of the systems that perpetuate the cycle of poverty. The stories participants tell when they finish the COPE show a greater sense of awareness about the cycle of poverty, and greater compassion and humility toward those who are in poverty. For some, the learning from the simulation is closer to home than they anticipate. "This simulation felt very real to me," shared a participant from the most recent simulation in October. "I grew up in--a family where my dad had to work a lot just so we could make it. I often felt like I wasn't important to him and wished he would spend more time with me. In the family scenario I was in tonight, I was the dad in a family very similar to the family I grew up in. I ended up making the same decision my own dad did. I chose to work whenever and wherever I could because it was so hard to get my family what they needed. I see my own dad really differently because of this experience. I get it now, why he made the decisions that he did." At the conclusion of the experience, students come together to discuss how the professions can function as an interprofessional team, who will work with those in poverty to overcome the challenges and work toward thriving. The COPE is a key learning opportunity for IWU students. As they transition into professional careers in any of their majors, they will encounter coworkers, employees, students, and clients who are trapped in poverty and have a greater awareness for how they can love their neighbor. Keep a look out for future COPE news! 14 SCHOOL OF NURSING SPRING 2020
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