06-02-2025
Poverty Escape Room opens the eyes of the public
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KLEO) — Poverty can make it a struggle to survive, and not everyone sees the crisis firsthand.
This escape room has the participants immerse themselves into some people's reality: poverty.
'When they begin this simulation, each group receives a packet, which is their life. And not all groups start out with the same advantages, which is real life. Not every family starts out with the same advantages, such as an ID and a piece of mail to document where they live,' Learning Specialist Erin Grant said.
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As the escape room unfolds, the participants start to feel for those struggling.
'Having those judgments made of you, having always this limited resource that's always kind of burning away. And you don't always have that extra or any kind of cushion, in fact sometimes you don't have enough to even meet those basic needs on a daily basis,' Participant Dr. Yuseph Khan said.
This escape room has eight stations for the families to navigate as they need to maintain gas, food, and diapers for their children, as well as other tasks in the 30 minute experience.
'And as the experience unfolds they're able to kind of address some of their biases they originally held, bring some awareness to the crisis of poverty and what it takes to survive. So they become much more engaged in sharing their experiences,' Grant said.
'It's not a hole you can climb out of, sometimes it's like just more of a metaphor of treading water right. Trying to not to get too many mouthfuls of water. And that's the situation that climbing out or escaping poverty is in our group today, I think two groups escaped poverty,' Khan said.
While only two of the seven groups were able to escape poverty today in this exercise, all are leaving with a better understanding of the struggle.
The organizers of the Poverty Escape Room simulations take them across the state and nation to bring more awareness and understanding to the issue.
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