Families and individuals living in poverty face challenges that can make meeting daily basic needs impossible.
Poverty impacts physical and mental health and is linked to higher mortality rates.
In Oneida and Herkimer Counties, 21% of children and 12% of seniors are in households below the national poverty guidelines.
Through this simulator, you'll experience the challenge of navigating decisions in daily life when living with serious income constraints. You'll navigate through making critical choices to support your basic needs based on the resources available to an individual or family living in poverty. You'll make choices regarding housing, healthcare, food, transportation, technology, childcare, utilities, and spending. Hover over each choice in the simulator for content around each selection available.
Can you meet all your basic needs with the credits allotted?
Try the simulator below by first choosing either a family of 4 or a senior citizen. You will have options worth between 1 and 3 credits for each category.
What will you decide?
Now Breathe... How do you feel?
Are you frustrated, angry, hurt, confused, hopeless? These are some of the many feelings people report having when navigating the barriers to meeting their daily, basic needs.
Spend just one minute adding up the losses you experienced during the simulation. Losses are the cuts to your energy, hopes, or plans that you experienced when you wanted to make a different decision but you knew you couldn’t.
Now think for a minute what experiencing that loss would feel like over weeks, months, or years. That is the reality for more than 20% of our neighbors.
Change is possible.
Services provided by United Way MV and our funded partners can help fill these gaps. While these programs and services are vital, we also need to create change to stop the cycle of poverty.
Together, we can combat poverty in Oneida, Herkimer, and Madison counties. United Way of the Mohawk Valley is doing just that through childcare, transportation, housing, and more.