Optimistic Voices
Vital voices in the fields of global health, global child welfare reform and family separation, and those intent on conducting ethical missions in low resource communities and developing nations. Join our hosts as they engage in conversations with diverse guests from across the globe, sharing optimistic views, experiences, and suggestions for better and best practices as they discuss these difficult topics.
Optimistic Voices
Rooted in Reality: Simulating Life on the Edge of Extreme Poverty
Ever wondered what life is really like for families living on the edge of extreme poverty? Most of us have only seen poverty through statistics or images, but a new immersive experience called "Rooted in Reality" is changing how we understand this complex reality.
When a team of college students traveled to Sierra Leone to develop this groundbreaking poverty simulation, they discovered something profound. People experiencing poverty don't define their situation primarily by their lack of material resources – they define it by feelings of powerlessness, inferiority, and hopelessness. "We feel like garbage that other people throw out," one person shared during a World Bank study. "We don't matter to the world and it is our destiny to be poor."
This mindset revelation transformed the team's approach. Rather than creating a simulation focused solely on material deprivation, they crafted an experience that plunges participants into the emotional reality of poverty – the impossible choices, the systemic barriers, and the cumulative stress of living without safety nets. During beta testing, participants emerged feeling "incredibly stressed" and "very anxious," gaining valuable insight into the psychological toll of poverty.
What makes Rooted in Reality uniquely powerful is its authenticity. Every scenario is based on real stories gathered from families in Bo and Freetown, Sierra Leone. The team worked closely with case managers at the Child Reintegration Center and staff at Mercy Hospital to ensu
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Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.
https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html
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A bible study for groups and individuals, One Twenty-Seven: The Widow and the Orphan by Dr Andrea Siegel explores the themes of the first chapter of James, and in particular, 1:27. In James, we learn of our duty to the vulnerable in the historical context of the author. Order here or digital download
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Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone. Your small monthly donation, prayers, attention & caring is essential. You advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join
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Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.
Contact support@helpingchildrenworldwide.org to discuss how.
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Helpingchildrenworldwide.org
Welcome to Optimistic Voices, a podcast of helping children worldwide. We help children worldwide by strengthening and empowering families and communities. This podcast is for people interested in deep conversations with thought leaders in the fields of child welfare, global health and international missions.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Optimistic Voices podcast. I'm your host, laura Horvath, and I'm joined today by my colleague and very good friend, and also sometimes co-host, but often guest, of Optimistic Voices, yaz Vaughn and Cassie Robertson. Yaz and Cassie, along with three other college students, traveled to Beau, sierra Leone, to work on an important project developing what's known as a poverty simulation, designed to give people a glimpse into what life is like for families living on the edge of extreme poverty. Rooted in Reality, was beta tested last week and I'm excited to get to talk with our guests today about this project, how it was built and what they hope to achieve with it. This project is inspired not by research although, yaz, I know you've done quite a lot of that but also by real experience.
Speaker 2:Yaz, cassie and the rest of the team traveled to Bo, sierra Leone, to visit families and learn firsthand from the skilled social workers at the Child Reintegration Center and Mercy Hospital, to gather the stories and the information that were used to build the simulation. We're gonna dive into how the simulation was built, what they learned on the ground and why creating opportunities for deeper empathy and understanding is so critical if we truly want to make a difference. But before we dive in. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you, it's great to have you guys here. Can you tell us what is a poverty simulation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a poverty simulation is basically an interactive experience that's designed to help participants better understand the challenges and barriers faced by individuals and families living in extreme poverty. So people are having to navigate various tasks and situations that mirror the daily struggles of those living in poverty, and the goal of any sort of project like this is to increase empathy, awareness and understanding of systemic issues and obstacles that contribute to and perpetuate poverty.
Speaker 4:I would just add that it's getting to have a hands-on experience without actually having to travel or be somewhere, and to give participants and people that experience to learn by doing.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us a little bit about the project that you've been working on and how the idea for poverty simulation came about?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So yeah, just adding on to what Cassie said, I mean the best way to learn about something is to experience it for yourself, and we we see that play out in our mission teams. We like to send people. We say come and see what life is like and take this paradigm of learning before serving. If you learn about and understand things, then you're better able to serve people and come alongside them. But we know that not everybody can travel to Sierra Leone and sometimes that's because of commitments here in the States. Sometimes people have health issues that make travel for long periods of time like that really difficult, or even, you know, some people have jobs that don't allow them to kind of have the vacation time you would need. It's about two weeks that we send our teams over, and so we wanted to develop something where people could experientially learn about Sierra Leone. We've been talking about doing some virtual mission trip experiences for years at this organization. We did one during COVID. That was pretty successful.
Speaker 3:But last year I attended a cost of poverty experience which is offered by an NGO called Think Tank, and they're an organization that's very dedicated to elevating the voices of people who live in poverty here in the United States and offering solutions and having them have a seat at the table to create those solutions, and having them have a seat at the table to create those solutions. And so, as I was going through that simulation, I wondered about the additional challenges that are faced in places where there aren't such things as social safety nets. So, of course, in the United States, we have things like WIC and Medicaid, we even have reliable transportation and infrastructure I mean, during COVID we saw what happens when supply chains go down but for the most part we have fairly reliable access to a lot of things but these are challenges that don't exist in low and middle income countries, in the majority world, and so I wondered what the experience was like if you built a simulation that simulated a place with no social safety nets. And so I started looking into organizations that had developed something similar for low-income countries, and we actually discovered two organizations that had done this already. First is an organization called Global Crossroads. They're based out of Hong Kong, and their simulation is all about the hardships and choices that are made by people.
Speaker 3:I think it's stationed in East Asia, but it's centered around people who live in a slum, and so their experience has been used all around the world. It's actually been shown at the UN. They've had billionaires come and go through it, and so it's a very thorough experience that they have. This experience was co-opted by a second organization called Hope International, and their organization is very focused on savings groups and economic empowerment for families, and so they were doing this model to help educate people about the work that they were doing and why it was so important the result that these organizations had from conducting these experiences in the US and all around the world. I thought that this might be a really great way for people to connect with and really experientially understand the work that our allies around the world do Sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:Can you briefly describe the Rooted in Reality simulation without giving too much away? And, by the way, why would we be worried about giving that away?
Speaker 3:too much away. And and, by the way, why would we be worried about giving that away? Yeah, so it's interesting to try and do a podcast and talk about this without talking about it too much, because I hope that you're listening and go wow, this sounds really interesting. I want to be a part of it.
Speaker 3:But the simulation actually works best when people don't know a lot about it coming into it, which is true.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you ended up in a situation right now where you were suddenly homeless and you had no idea what you were going to do next, it can be really hard to figure out what systems are in place that could support you and trying to find food and shelter and housing and all those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to try and keep it simple for our listeners, because I want you to bring this back to your church groups and to your friends. This simulation is all about allowing people to step into the shoes of real people who live in poverty every single day. Everything that we built is based on the real experiences of families in Sierra Leone that are helped, as you said, laura, by Mercy Hospital and the Child Reintegration Center, but also by some of our other regional allies in the capital of Freetown Child and Family Preservation Services, so all of their experiences were put together. In this and in our simulation you would be given options that exist in these communities and confronted with their choices that real people have to make and the consequences that people have of those choices.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited to get into the how of how this was put together and how Cassie got involved with the development of it, but I want to ask you both, before we get to that piece, why do you think it's so important for people to be able to step into the shoes of someone who's living on the edge of extreme poverty, even if it's just for a really short time?
Speaker 3:So when we train our mission teams, we actually have an entire session dedicated to helping people understand poverty, and this session starts off with the UN definitions of poverty. They have one for poverty and then they have one called absolute poverty, and we discuss the different approaches to how organizations like the UN and even local organizations define poverty. And we really do this for two reasons. First is that in 1997, the World Bank did a study called Voices of the Poor, and they interviewed people all around the world that lived in extreme poverty and asked them how do you define that? What does poverty mean to you? And out of all of the definitions that currently exist around the world today, most of them really revolve around material needs. Most people see poverty as living on less than I think it's $1.25 a day. So it's defined by this lack of material access. You don't have food, you don't have money, you don't have access to clean water or health care. But what was really interesting about this study is that the majority of people defined poverty not by their access to material needs. They did mention that as an example, but it was more characterized by the sense of inferiority, powerlessness and hopelessness. So they said things like we feel like garbage that other people throw out. We don't matter to the world and it is our destiny to be poor. There was like an overarching belief that I don't matter and things are the way that they are and no matter what I do, nothing is ever going to change that. So it's a mindset of fatalism and hopelessness. So if you really want people to understand what poverty is, you can't replicate that just by taking away material things. There are plenty. There are plenty of ways that you know you can kind of simulate those experiences. But to really create something that is a simulation of what poverty is like, you have to force people into a mindset of poverty and you have to feel the emotional interactions of what that is like. So that's kind of the first reason of why we felt it was important to develop this.
Speaker 3:The second reason that we think people should step into the shoes of impoverished people is this idea that whatever you think the problem is will also determine what you think the solution should be. So if you hear a noise in your car and you think that the problem is the engine, then you're going to work on the engine. But if the problem is actually the tires as it was with me a couple hundred dollars later, then no amount of work on the engine is actually going to get your car running again. And so, when it comes to poverty, if you think of the issue is that people have a lack of access to material resources, then the obvious answer is to just give them material resources. But if you think that the issue is that people are deprived of consistent access to resources, they don't have social safety nets when it comes to handling shocks, and that the deck is always stacked against them and their mindset is that they feel that they'll never rise out of those situations, then your response to that is going to be really different.
Speaker 2:So incredibly powerful in a couple of ways, and I think you're right. I think that we tend to think about poverty as a lack of things, a lack of money, a lack of resources, what have you? That mindset thing is really powerful and, I think, something that people don't really think about. So, full disclosure. I participated in the Rooted in Reality beta testing last week. It was my first experience with it. I've heard, of course, you know about it as Yaz was building it.
Speaker 2:But after we went through the whole process and we unpacked it with the participants, the very first question, Yaz, you asked them was how do you feel? And they'd been in this you know simulation for a couple of hours and I think the first person said I feel incredibly stressed, I feel very anxious. People talked about sort of you know, feeling, a sense of hopelessness and a sense of like there was nothing they could do to get ahead of these cascading challenges that were happening to them. And it was just, it was really powerful to see that and to listen to the various decisions that they made that led them actually further down a path of desperation or a path of hopelessness, because they just didn't really know even how to prioritize, how to tackle the challenges that they were facing. It was really, really incredible. Cassie, do you have anything you want to add to like why this would be important and the power of this?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I think it's so important to step into anyone's shoes that's in extreme poverty because it doesn't just show you but it challenges you to think about those assumptions that you've had before and to build, like empathy for people in an experience that you may not have experienced yourself.
Speaker 4:I think that when I first heard about this simulation something that like I was kind of struggling with understanding that it's not pretending you can understand someone else's reality, but instead it's creating a space to reflect on those hard conversations, and I really liked the mindset, like it's not just the assumption of it's a lack of resources, it's a lack of food, it's a lack of medical care, but it's also just the feeling of being stressed when is that next job going to come from? Feeling like very underwhelmed and overwhelmed and all of those different emotions that come with losing things. So just creating that space for people to step into that, even for just that moment, to answer those questions and to build that empathy and challenge whatever assumptions that someone may have had before, that they didn't know because they weren't informed, and changing it from just being that lack of resources to this emotional shift, which I think the emotions, what leads the action, leads to the change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really a powerful statement, and I want to, I just want to pin something down that that you've both kind of said now, and that is you know, yes, obviously we're speaking to people who would potentially participate in the poverty simulation, in the position of, like, just learning about people living in poverty and what their experience might be like, or whatever.
Speaker 2:But I also want to kind of tap the shoulders of other NGO leaders that might be listening to this episode, because I think, yes, you said something really important about if you, if you think the issue is just that they don't have enough widgets or whatever, then of course, as an NGO, you're just going to, you know, supply them with a whole bunch of widgets. But if the issue is more about empowering people and empowering systems and building into systems so that there's a consistent, you know, access to resources and a consistent safety net and things like that, and then people are developing their own capacity that is such that is so much more sustainable than just, you know, we just ship over containers full of widgets or whatever it is, you know, we think that is the solution. So I think that's really powerful too. So, what was your initial vision for the rooted in reality simulation and how did it evolve as you developed it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm excited to hear from Cassie, because I really did just kind of throw our December team into it and they're like what are we building again? What is this, what does it look like? Because I, you know, I had gone through a simulation done by Think Tank and so I kind of had this idea of what it could look like, but I really did want to keep a very loose initial vision.
Speaker 3:There are some other organizations that do very similar projects. There's one that we know of actually that has their own Monopoly game that you play, which Monopoly is supposed to simulate the horrors of capitalism, and it there certainly does. You put your kid in an orphanage. It's a real rough version. But I really kind of had these different frameworks in mind. But I wanted everything to be shaped by the Sierra Leone context and by the experiences of our December team. So I had some kind of frameworks that I put in place, ideas of how things could be incorporated, and really I just developed a list of questions for the team to be able to ask the case managers at the Child Reintegration Center and at Child and Family Preservation Services and to ask the hospital staff at Mercy Hospital to really learn more so they could figure out how to build this well. But yeah, I try to keep things very open as we develop the vision for this project.
Speaker 4:I, when I first heard about the project, I was I'm not going to lie, I was very curious and a little confused of what it would look like. Because when you hear poverty simulation, my, my brain automatically went to oh, a game. But how do you make a game out of such a hard conversation and a hard topic? So that's kind of where I was when I first heard about it. And then, as we were leading up to our trip and our team and we had all these discussions, for me it kind of shifted in my head and it was no longer just this like we're making this game, quote unquote, but instead it's creating that immersive experience for people to connect with Sierra Leone and the people there.
Speaker 4:This was my third trip and going before I'd come home and I would someone would say like, how is it there, what's it like? And I would have a really hard time kind of putting into words what that is Like. What did I feel, what did I see? So that allowed, so that for me the simulation was creating a way for people to feel it and see it and engage in the frustration and the limitations that families in Sierra Leone face every day. And I think for me it was also just shifting from. Instead of just learning, it was capturing the stories and capturing what the Child Reintegration Center and Mercy Hospital do in Sierra Leone and how they help navigate the challenges that the families face there. So just having those opportunities for reflection and discussion, like with the team, and then bringing that back to the states, I'm really looking forward to and I'm excited to see it continue to be developed.
Speaker 2:It was a really interesting mission trip model, I think, for this particular team.
Speaker 2:It was something new for Helping Children Worldwide. I think we've talked about vision trips before and we've certainly sent, like you know, board members and others on a kind of go and see, learn about the programs on the ground and that kind of thing, and I think that's really powerful and it really has its place. But your team, in particular Cassie, was, like you say, not just sort of meeting families or hearing stories or whatever, but you were really deep dive, focused in on. You know, leaned in is how I sort of picture you guys listening to people and hearing their stories and trying to capture them and to do that in a way that honored their dignity and respected their privacy. And you know all of that, and so it was really an interesting thing to watch from back here the work that you were doing there, when the project that comes out of it is kind of after the trip. So what was that like for you? I know I'm throwing in a new question in the middle of all this, but what was that like for?
Speaker 4:you. I think at first it was really challenging. I think at first it was really challenging because I want to do justice, I want to bring their stories to life but still respect that they're real people. These are their stories and you can't just bring a story back to the United States and say, oh, here you go, when that's someone who's living like that every single day. So I think for me it was definitely challenging but also very special to hear the stories that they would share, the people in Sierra Leone, to hear how the staff would speak about their jobs and speak about how they're helping families, and it was really just a very like I want to almost say humbling experience, um, and very heartwarming that they were just so willing to share any aspects of it. And a lot of the conversations were really hard to hear, um, because it's their life and life is hard and um, but yeah. So I think bringing those stories back and doing justice is really important and I'm excited to see um, see how those stories come to be.
Speaker 2:All right. So, yes, you led this college team. I guess actually Cassie led the college team and you were the staff accompanying them, and there were a couple other college students Macy and Reagan. Is that Sarah and Sarah? And Sarah, your sister, cassie, right? Yes, my sister, that's cool. I traveled to Sierra Leone last year with my sister. There is nothing like getting to go to Sierra Leone on a mission trip with your sister, is there?
Speaker 4:It was pretty great. It was a really really great. That's pretty great Okay.
Speaker 2:So you traveled to both Sierra Leone and Freetown. Sierra Leone visited with the case management team at the CRC and the hospital staff at Mercy. Can you each share some of the surprising information that you learned from them?
Speaker 3:I'm going to make you go first on this one, Cassie.
Speaker 4:Something that I found very, I want to say, surprising, but I don't really know if that's the right word for it, but just that when we started having these conversations, um, it was with you know, the staff, and then we kind of would start with like a question and just see where the questions would go. Um, and our first conversation was with some of the staff at the Child Reintegration Center and we asked a question about what does poverty look like here in Sierra Leone, um, and who is considered to be in poverty? And with the response is, what I guess would say is surprising was that they said that everybody in Sierra Leone they consider to be poor and impoverished, but instead of just saying that there's like different levels of it, different levels of access and resources, and that's kind of where people fall into those different categories, but just to hear them, the people there say, oh, everybody here is is poor, we don't consider anyone not to be a part of that group of people. So that was really surprising for me.
Speaker 4:Another really surprising moment that was very happy for me and it made me feel a lot of really great emotions is we asked at the end what they love about their job. Like that was just the question is, what do you love about your job? And it almost felt like the staff there has never been asked that before, because they all kind of pause for a moment and they like kind of think about it. And then the second that they were ready to answer, all of everybody we talked to it was the same like feeling they would just start to share a story about the families and seeing families go graduate out of the program. Somebody talked about watching kids go to college, all those different feelings, getting to see children with their caregivers, building those relationships, releasing families on their own. It was just a really special moment to hear that joy and the happiness from all the staff when they were sharing that. So I that's not really surprising, but it was just a really nice conversation to have.
Speaker 2:I love that you ended on that. I know those folks well and I know they love what they do and it makes me very happy to hear how happy it makes them too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll add on to what Cassie was sharing. I mean, I've been with Helping Children Worldwide for four and a half years now. I've been to Sierra Leone multiple times, I'm in ongoing communication with the staff on the ground there and so, coming into it, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of life and culture of people in Sierra Leone that I thought would be very helpful to help the team navigate things, and maybe in some ways it was, but really taking the time to sit down with our allies, ask them about what life is like there. I learned more on this trip than I had in any other previous trip and I want to echo this is something we actually also just talked about in our most recent team meeting is this idea of assumptions. You know I had an assumption about how they saw and defined poverty, and so it was actually Emmanuel Nabiou who encouraged me to include a question about how they defined poverty and, like Cassie said, I mean that really changed everything about how we were able to understand the framework of what life is like there.
Speaker 3:They talked about how, if you study social work or study community development in Sierra Leone, you learn that there are different levels of poverty within the country.
Speaker 3:They call them poverty, poor, and then a third level that they call popo repo, and each of these is described by different challenges.
Speaker 3:So people in poverty may have difficulty paying bills, paying their rent, paying their utilities, but they live in homes that are made of stone and they have electricity, they're able to eat at least once a day, they may be able to send one or a couple of kids to school.
Speaker 3:And then, on the other end of the spectrum, people who are Popo Repo usually can't afford to eat every day. They live in mud huts or in less stable housing. They can't access resources that they need to survive, and then poor being the kind of the middle category there between those two, and so seeing the way that they categorized what poverty was like was incredibly helpful for me to understand. You know that. I think I mean we talked about like this being an experience of what people are like in extreme poverty. I think I mean we talked about like this being an experience of what people are like in extreme poverty. But even if you were living at the edge of extreme poverty you know you're not, you are what they would just call poverty Then one shock is all it would take to put you back down on a lower level, and so seeing that you know there's nuance and differences between that was very surprising for me.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm struck by by both of the things that you've said.
Speaker 2:When you're talking about asking the people themselves how they define poverty, Cassie, when you talk about asking them, you know what is it they love about the work that they do is how honoring and respectful that is of the people that you went to serve a mission with, and how that's often missing from short-term missions.
Speaker 2:Often short-term mission teams will arrive and there'll be a project and the work gets started and the project may have even been developed by the people on the ground or in collaboration with the people on the ground.
Speaker 2:But to actually sit down with the staff at CRC and at Mercy Hospital and ask them about their lives, to ask them about the context in which they live and work, I think that often is a missing piece in short-term missions, and I'm just so proud of this team for just the whole way this thing was constructed and the way that that created a space to really platform the voices of the people on the ground in some really amazing ways. So, Cassie, I know that your team got to visit and you've been multiple times to Sierra Leone. You're kind of one of our frequent flyers and so you probably had met with families before on the ground, but can you describe for our audience a little bit what it was like to step into the homes and communities of some of these people who, as we've described, are in these categories of poverty poor and popo repo?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I've been before, but definitely on this trip I think I had a more on this trip. I think I had a more mindset of looking at what like resources people have and having more conversations and sharing stories and all that. So, getting to visit communities and homes. Something that always has struck me when visiting Sierra Leone is that it really is like a village, it really is a community. Wherever you are, people are out, friends, family, together, and it's really it's really great when you go, when you get to go to these communities, a lot of families will invite you into their homes, which is so very kind of them, especially because we are four, we're two and five, so five like random strangers, kind of just walking through your home and they just they welcome you in Um, they'll bring you chairs and they'll share stories and we'll have conversations and it's um, it's very kind and it's very eyeopening, um, and I will never um take for granted that kindness and that um hospitality that we get.
Speaker 4:But, um, something that I noticed a lot this trip was in these houses, looking for visible differences in terms of those economic lifestyles. So something like electricity Some houses had electricity while others didn't. We were in one home that had a ton of electricity and furniture and then we went to another where there wasn't a lot of furniture. So those visible differences in terms of like how people live and reflecting on those economic lifestyles and then just walking through the communities, you see many different challenges like access to clean water. You'll see the wells, the health services. You know when you're in a village that's pretty far away from the main city there's not a lot of health services there. You get to really see that. But then a lot of strengths too. You see the neighbors looking out for one another and the children playing and it's really it's great to see those strengths as well and not just looking for those challenges just looking for those challenges.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I just want to echo what Cassie shares. I mean, I think it's not lost on me that we are perfect strangers intruding in on their lives, and we're just really incredibly grateful that people are willing to share their time with us. They always bring out chairs for everybody to sit in. They'll borrow a chair from a neighbor if they don't have enough. They're always very welcoming. They want to shake your hand, which is a sign of welcoming and Mende culture.
Speaker 3:When we visited Sammy Village, they brought us all coconuts because it was the dry season, so their chickens were not there, but they brought us some coconuts because it was the dry season, so their chickens were not there, but they brought us some coconuts, and so it was just a time of incredible warmth and kindness to be welcomed and, I think, just a genuine reflection of some of the community differences that exist there that are actually kind of hard to replicate in our simulation.
Speaker 3:So in our beta test this past week, we had one of our people say, oh, I didn't know I could ask my neighbor for help, and I was like, oh yeah, that would never have been a problem in Sierra Leone. People depend on one another. But you know, to really just get back to the question, I mean thinking about poverty being something where people feel unseen and unwanted by society to have somebody come all the way from America and want to visit with them. It's not lost on me that that is honoring to them to know that someone from all the way across the ocean cares and that they are not unseen. Someone from all the way across the ocean cares and that they are not unseen, and so it's it's. It is really a privilege to be able to to do that and and provide that. But really it was also incredibly significant to see the way that, well like the things that CRC was talking about is being reflected. You know, cassie shared about electricity and houses and having this and having that and what the actual differences looked like.
Speaker 2:Again, I just think hearing that kind of framework really opened my eyes to what I was able to see and understand within their culture, both in Freetown and in Bow, spent a lot of time with the CRC case management team on the ground and you saw some things and engaged with those families in ways that are reflected in the way you're talking about this right now, which demonstrate to me a kind of cultural humility that, yes, I know you work very hard as our admissions person to help all of our teams understand and sort of frame that out for people to understand that you know, when you're entering into the life of a person, there's a certain amount of respect that needs to go along with those engagements and interactions.
Speaker 2:And so I just want to highlight that there are ways to do this that are honoring of people and are respectful of people, and there are ways of doing that that aren't. And I appreciate so deeply how carefully you trained this team and worked with this team, both before you left the United States and while you were in Sierra Leone, around this way of practicing cultural humility as you engage with real life people. Cassie, do you want to speak to the value of that for you personally as you traveled on this team? I know you had had it before, but in particular, as you were engaging so deeply in people's lives this time. How did that impact the work that you were doing?
Speaker 4:I think, like the training and the conversations before were so important.
Speaker 4:I think in any circumstance, no matter where you are, who you're with, it is really challenging to meet.
Speaker 4:Going to a place that's very different from where you're from and when you're asking a lot of questions about that can be more sensitive.
Speaker 4:So having those conversations before we even left the United States, before we got to Sierra Leone, I think made it a lot easier to have those conversations with the people on the ground there and I think it kind of opened my eyes into a different way of asking questions and it prepared me to think about what.
Speaker 4:If I think about if I were asking a question, how would I want it to be asked and how can I make this question easier for someone to understand or make it in the context of something that I understand? Um, and I think it also prepared us when we got there for those deeper conversations that we easier for someone to understand or make it in the context of something that I understand. And I think it also prepared us when we got there for those deeper conversations that we would have after having conversations with families for our own reflection purposes and trying to learn. So the conversations before our trip. I think without those it would have been really challenging to come into a new country and meet new people and try to learn as deeply as we did.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what are some of the biggest challenges you heard CRC case managers talk about when you visited with them and interviewed them?
Speaker 4:One of the challenges that I think a lot of people talked about when we were having these conversations was just about transportation having a difficult time reaching out to families and visiting different families. Some of the case managers have families that are very far outside of Bo. They have, you know, bikes and motorcycles, but still there's only a few of those and a lot of families. Another challenge that a lot of people we talked to spoke about was just the inadequate resources. So that also falls into transportation, but just having enough resources to help families, because it's not just the child, it's the whole family. So making sure all the children have school and food and just the ability to have a job. So a lot of the case managers and the staff at Mercy Hospital talked about those inadequate resources for those families.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when I am thinking back on some of the conversations that we had, and I think one of the most important ones for me to understand was that the reputation of these NGOs really, really matters a lot in a place that is incredibly community-based and where your reputation means everything in an honor-shame culture. It's not like people in Sierra Leone are going to look up their GuideStar or Charity Navigator rating to determine is this an organization I want to receive services from? No, they're going to look at, you know, do I know somebody who's gotten something from them? What did they get? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:And so I think one of the biggest challenges that NGOs face is maintaining that reputation as somewhere that is helpful to people, because if things go wrong, then the NGO is only as strong as the I mean, you know, to use a business term the customers that they have. If people, if you build it, that doesn't mean people will come, and therefore they have to really work hard to maintain relationships with people and to navigate the boundaries that they do have to set, because, I mean, like all NGOs, have limits in what they are able to do Navigating. You know, we can only help you with this thing. We can only do this much, I think is an incredible challenge that they have to face every day. That's built on maintaining that relationship and maintaining the knowledge that CRC and Mercy Hospital are places that are here to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that seems like a really difficult line to navigate between having a reputation as a place, as an NGO, where you can get help, but also being limited in the kinds of help and the amount of help that they can provide, just because of the reality of the situations. Were there any moments or conversations for either of you that really shifted your understanding of poverty or resilience?
Speaker 4:I think we talked about the poverty before, but if you have anything, Something that I noticed throughout a lot of the conversations I would have while in Sierra Leone was having those conversations and hearing a lot of the challenges in terms of resources that families face. So, you know, lack of food, lack of electricity, schooling, you know, having not being able to afford the school fees to send children to school and making a lot of those impossible choices in terms of resources and poverty really stood out to me. But on the other end of that, what also really stood out was that those hardships and challenges those families face. But they spoke with such pride about their life and about their accomplishments and their futures, even when they face such those daily challenges. That I know for me is something that I have a hard time trying to imagine, especially hearing them talk about education.
Speaker 4:You know, we're in a country where almost everyone gets to go to school and to hear how important education is in Sierra Leone and to hear that it's a challenge, you know, send children to school but then to hear that that's something that people want to do in the future and they're happy and they're, you know they face those challenges that was a really those are always really nice conversations because I think for me it changes how I think about poverty and that it's not just that lack of that material resource, but it's also there's a lot of strength behind it and it's the resilience behind the people who are trying to get out of those challenges in any way that they can.
Speaker 4:So it just reminded me that people that are living in poverty are not just defined by those like circumstances. They're probably the most resourceful people that I've gotten to know and they're really committed to their families and communities, which I think is really strong. And it has made me a lot more cautious of how I talk about poverty and how I've now realized the importance of speaking about it, and not just in terms of lack of resources, but there are all these other characteristics of people who are in this that live in poverty every day.
Speaker 2:So what impresses you the most about the CRC's approach to the way they support families? It feels like a loaded question.
Speaker 4:I'll tell a little story. I think for me it's the relationship part of it, and that the CRC and the case managers have such a good, strong relationship with all of the families and the communities in Sierra Leone. When we visited Sammy Village we were with one of the case managers and when he got out of the car it was like the celebrity had walked into town. All the kids came running to him giving him hugs. They were so excited to just see him and that went across the whole community. Everybody was so thrilled that he was there and I think for me that was such a nice way of seeing that relationship between the case managers and those communities, which I think is to me such an important thing in CRC takes is that relationship building with the communities and the families.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll add on to that. Cassie spoke earlier about asking the case managers what they most loved about their job, and George, who is the lead case manager at CRC, he said his favorite thing was when they complement our work with their own work, and so I think just seeing and hearing them reflect on the idea that empowering families isn't just about giving things, but it is about altering that mindset and instilling that resilience in people to be able to handle shocks so that they can handle things on their own, I'm going to pile on and say that one of my favorite comments that one of the case managers ever made to me was last year as CRC was releasing about sudden families from CRC support because they're strong enough, resilient enough to be on their own.
Speaker 2:And Rosa Safa, who's one of the case managers and one of the counselors at CRC, said that she described that moment is very bittersweet in the sense that this is a family that she'd come to care about and worry about and had worked really hard with, and she was both proud and a little sad to see them go. I imagine it's probably a little bit how, Cassie, your parents felt when you went away to college. You know something along those lines where there's just this sort of mixed emotions of pride and gratitude and all of those things that you feel when you really have a real relationship with people. And I love that. The CRC case managers, you know they have their caseloads, they work with the same families, they build those trusting relationships and I think it really impacts their work powerfully. So back to the simulation. When you were building it, what real world realities did you feel were absolutely critical to include?
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, without giving too much away about how it functions. I think a couple of the things that repeatedly came up, regardless of whether we were in Freetown or Bow, whether we were in a city or in a village, was access to health care and the barriers to accessing it, whether that be maternal and child health issues. Women being able to get quality prenatal care and access it, while also trying to balance having a job and maybe having other children and other things going on, was a huge thing that I wanted to make sure was incorporated, especially because we had such a strong focus on the work being done by CRC. I wanted to incorporate some of the on the work being done by CRC. I wanted to incorporate some of the work that's being done by Mercy Hospital to increase access to health care.
Speaker 3:Another thing that also came up quite a bit was children being cared for by other family members because of the loss of a parent.
Speaker 3:It was a term that I learned just recently, which is men pick in, which is where a relative cares for a child that is not their own, but as if they were their own child, and so we wanted to simulate both the value of that of children being taken in and the value of knowing that children do have other family options when they have lost a parent, but also some of the problems that come up with that.
Speaker 3:A mother dies and she has three children and an aunt takes them in and now there's three more mouths to feed than she's used to having to pay for, and how does she handle that situation?
Speaker 3:And then I think you asked me earlier about kind of the initial vision that we had for this, and when we first were talking about this, we were very against the idea of anyone playing a child in the simulation. We didn't want to kind of have this child-centric model to it. We wanted to emphasize family dynamics, but we found it to be really important to include children working and include the barriers that children have to accessing education. Because another thing that we really learned is part of the reputation that CRC has is as an organization that provides education support to children. It's not the family strengthening, it's not the microfinance, it's not some of the other programs that they do, but education being one that they're most well known for, programs that they do, but education being one that they're most well known for and so highlighting how NGOs like CRC can overcome that barrier and improve family well-being as a result.
Speaker 2:So how did you manage to balance the challenge of making the experience authentic without being overwhelming or discouraging participants?
Speaker 3:Well, laura, I'll ask you, as someone who helped do it being on the outside is harder to see and, really honestly, as we were developing it, we were like how do we balance all these different things?
Speaker 3:And I can't say for certain that we have absolutely done that, because part of understanding and having empathy is recognizing that poverty is, in fact, overwhelming and discouraging for people who live in it. But I think, going back to what Cassie was talking about with resilience, I think the way that we've built this simulation allows people to either succeed or fail, depending on how you want to define that, based just on themselves. There are systematic factors that are put in place that make things difficult for everyone who participates, but whether or not someone is able to afford things and take care of themselves really does depend on the way that they invest in the simulation. So it's really, you know, we could have a family that we expected to do very well in the simulation that does very poorly. Based on the resilience of the people who are portraying that family, I think the balance comes in to the debriefing and how people react to the situations that they're put in.
Speaker 4:While we were there, we were kind of, you know, starting to think about the different scenarios and the people we met, and there were a lot of conversations that we kind of started with, okay, so that's a story, but we don't want everyone to leave feeling just sad, like we don't want everyone to just walk out of there, kind of feeling like okay, so that's just it. Like you know, we wanted there, we wanted that hope. So I think there was a lot of conversations we had as a team of kind of okay, here's this story, you know. And to what Yaz was saying, how can we make it where it's the person who's in the simulation? It's up to them, you know, how do they get out of it, versus it just always being a sad story, because we didn't want everyone to leave feeling discouraged after that simulation.
Speaker 2:So as somebody who got to participate in the beta testing on Friday and then observe, you know that whole process but was still kind of new to it. I know you opened up the group. There was like an introduction that you gave to the entire group once the participants came in and you were very careful to say you know, this isn't a game. And it was very like in the in the very beginning moments of the first round, like it was clearly not a game. I don't think anybody had the sort of impulse to gamify it. People got very into character very quickly. They stayed in character participants and facilitators. It never had the feeling of silliness or, you know, of being a game.
Speaker 2:And then afterwards I think the piece where we all sat around in a circle you deliberately kind of moved us physically out of the space of the simulation into a different configuration, to kind of signal now we're doing this other thing. And then there was a very deep kind of unpacking of what just happened to us and what do we think about that and what did you notice and what do you wish you'd done differently? And I think that piece was a critically important you'd done differently. And I think that piece was a critically important part of the simulation. The simulation part is is, you know, obviously the main attraction. But the ability to unpack it on the back end, I think, is for me what let people walk away feeling uplifted a little bit, a little more hopeful a little, I imagine. Otherwise people would just sort of leave feeling very discouraged and overwhelmed. We've even talked about you know the appropriate audiences for this kind of thing. It's difficult stuff that you get into.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. I think it's just echoing what Cassie was sharing at the beginning about how she saw this. At the beginning, she was like, oh, it's a game. How do you make something that's such a hard topic a game, and so it was really important to really be intentional. We were very intentional in how we approached learning about and developing this, and then really intentional in how each aspect of the simulation was done to really balance overwhelming feelings and discouragement with being able to rise to the challenge.
Speaker 2:So building the simulation and sort of deciding who are the key kind of stations in the simulation, what role did you envision NGOs like the Child Reintegration Center and Mercy Hospital would play in the Rooted in Reality simulation and how did you decide to represent their impact?
Speaker 3:You know, like we said before, we don't just want people to walk away with just like a feeling of wow, that was awful, but really be able to link people to action. You know, you learned this and now you act on it, and so we wanted to highlight why NGOs like CRC and Mercy Hospital are so important, why they specifically do what they do, what services they provide, and why they do those as opposed to other things. Because the work that they do you know I was thinking and reflecting about it today is providing essential services that cushion people against shocks, whether those are economic shocks, whether they're physical shocks like a health issue, or emotional shocks that happen, and these things all have the potential to divide families. They're the reasons why children end up in orphanages, they're reasons why children end up living with other family members and having divisions and things like that, and they also exacerbate cycles of poverty. So I think the simulation provides a glimpse into how NGOs can improve the lives of impoverished families with providing them support and resources to take care of themselves.
Speaker 3:So I not to give details away, but you know, I think of it sort of like if you're living in extreme poverty, you can't keep your head above water. You're, you know you're trying to swim, but you can't keep your head above water. And NGOs can work to change systems and work on a systems and governmental and larger advocacy level, but that doesn't mean that just by themselves they have the ability to drain the ocean. So they can't change the water that people swim in. Often they can, you know, maybe a little bit, but they can't completely drain the ocean. But what they can do is give people a life preserver or, you know, a buoy so that they can keep swimming. So we wanted to make sure that that was a part of the simulation. Cassie, I don't know if you have anything to add from some of the things you learned.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think we were just kind of discussing how we wanted to incorporate NGOs and organizations into the simulation, ngos and organizations into the simulation, making sure that we represented those organizations NGOs as partners and not saviors, and making sure that those the partnership was, you know, working alongside the family and providing support and empowering a family, rather than trying to create this dependence between the NGO and the family, which I think was really important and something that we had a lot of conversations about leading up into the simulation.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. I love that that it wasn't this sort of typical. I think people who are sort of outside this work often think of you know a CRC or a Mercy Hospital as sort of a rescuer. But the way that you've incorporated them into the simulation and, honestly, the way they actually work is much more in alignment with empowering people to get on their own feet and to find their own solutions and to get stronger on their own with a little bit of help. So I think that's really great. What do the two of you hope that participants will walk away with after they've engaged in this Rooting Reality simulation?
Speaker 3:So I spoke earlier about Global Crossroads being the organization that developed an experience very similar to this, and so when I spoke with them about what is the purpose of their experience, what do they hope people come away with, they gave me these three E's and they were really good, so I incorporated them into how we did it, but I'm trying not to take credit for them, because they're doing really incredible work too. So we really want people to walk away with three things, and we've talked about all of these sort of intangibly, but I can kind of solidify them here. First is education. We want people to have a greater understanding of what poverty is like, what it feels like, not just what it looks like. Like what it feels like not just what it looks like, because you know, in the conversation that I had with them, they were like the sights and sounds and smells of poverty. You know you can experience those in so many other ways, but to experience the feelings of it is what's really important. So having a greater understanding of what it is like and especially understanding the structural barriers that exist that limit people from rising out of poverty, I would say that's a big thing. That Think Tank incorporates into their experience is understanding that people can work really hard and still not be able to provide for their families is really an important knowledge that they want people to have.
Speaker 3:Second thing is empathy.
Speaker 3:We want people to be engaged in their heart, have this emotional experience.
Speaker 3:They put it as we want to distill a lifetime of distress into a two-hour experience, and so you know, having that emotional reaction, experience, and so you know, having that emotional reaction, knowing how people feel in poverty and knowing what those feelings are like, even for a short amount of time, I think is incredibly powerful to walk away with.
Speaker 3:And then last is engagement. So you know, as I said before, whatever you think the problem is is going to determine what you think the solution should be. So we wanted to engage people to see that the solutions to poverty were not simple, or at least is not as simple as only giving things to people, that there are structural barriers that are in place, there are dynamics that happen, there's a mindset that deeply empowers whether or not you're able to succeed or fail in any sort of life situation, and that life is hard for everyone. And so there's a there's there's a lot of knowledge on how to do things better, which could be useful not just for people who are interested in learning about Sierra Leone and people who are interested in doing, you know, volunteer work, but NGOs around the world that are trying to do things better.
Speaker 4:I think Yaz said it perfectly in those three words, but I think for me, just especially that education aspect and that empathy, teaching people and sharing with people about that it's not just it's not just you don't have food or you don't have money, but it's how people feel and how we feel, and that it's a real thing that's going on throughout the world.
Speaker 2:I was meeting with a couple of our board members yesterday afternoon. We beta tested this on our board and some of our longtime ministry partners, and one of the board members said to me yesterday that he found the experience so incredibly moving and just really really powerful and you know he's been a longtime member of the board, this is something you know. He's familiar with HCW's work and our allies work in Sierra Leone. But it still gave him a new perspective, a new lens. It put him more in the shoes of someone experiencing poverty in the ways that you all have described, and so I just wanted to acknowledge that, just how well that went.
Speaker 2:I also wanted to say that you've built the simulation obviously using stories from the Child Integration Center, families and the Child and Family Permanency Services, families and Mercy Hospital and the staff at CRC, but you very intentionally not made it so specific to our allies on the ground. You've created a simulation that I think could fit in many different similar places in the global South, and so if we have listeners in the audience who are interested in checking out Rooted in Reality, please contact support at Helping Children Worldwide or check out our website, where it will be eventually, but probably isn't now. But yeah, let us know if you're interested in finding out more and how you might be able to access this resource, as we continue to roll it out, both as an opportunity to travel virtually, but also to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and come away changed. So what's next for this project and how do you see it being used and what do you hope its impact will be?
Speaker 3:So, laura, I think you yeah, you hit it on the head.
Speaker 3:If there is anyone listening to this that says that this project really sounds interesting and you want to get involved with it, please contact us.
Speaker 3:We would love to do it with your church, with your neighborhood, with your ministry group, with whatever group of people that you want to get together.
Speaker 3:We need a minimum of six to be able to do it well and a maximum of 29 participants to really roll it out in full, but we'd love to have it debuted with you so that you can really experience it for yourself, although next step for us is really getting some feedback from our allies in Sierra Leone to really make sure that we're representing life as accurately as possible. Like I said, you know, cassie and I learned a lot, and the rest of the December team learned a lot listening, but we want to share it back, make sure that they reflect on this and really feel that it is capturing what they want us to capture and the way that they are being challenged and the way that they are being successful in real life. So, once we have all that finalized and get out a couple more kinks, we're going to offer this to our partner churches as a way for them to engage others to join us on mission. So if you are interested, please let us know.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering if Cassie and the rest of the December team are ever going to get a chance to participate. Or would that just be so weird because you already know everything?
Speaker 4:I am hopeful to get to participate in it once. I think that we were, you know, a part of the creation of it, but I think it's going to be so different actually like doing it and I think it'd be really cool to see that work really come together in a participatory way. So maybe one day I will definitely participate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we had Reagan for half an hour or so on Friday just kind of sitting in and observing. But yeah, I'd love for the December team to get to see one in action or participate, maybe as facilitators, and one just so you could see just the fruit of your labors, because it was really, really amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely want to pull you guys in. I know you guys are mostly finishing up college, so that was just a timeline thing. So, yeah, priorities so that was.
Speaker 2:it's just a timeline thing, so um yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Priorities. Okay, um, yes, this is kind of in your wheelhouse. How can people stay connected to and even support the work of CRC and Mercy Hospital after they've experienced the rooted in reality simulation?
Speaker 3:And the same way that I tell all of our mission teams when they get back um, you can pray, do or give.
Speaker 3:You can give to the work that's being done on the ground not that you understand experientially the work that they're able to do with families to empower them and strengthen them towards resilience.
Speaker 3:So you could support us financially. You can volunteer with us. If there's some aspect of this that you went through and we're like, oh, I now understand why this is a problem and how it could be addressed, then you can travel with us on a mission team and the first thing we'll do is plug you in to learn, just like we did with this team and like we want to do with all of our teams. So volunteer with us to learn more about what life is like there and how you can be supportive of that. And then you can also volunteer with Helping Children Worldwide in various aspects and ways to help us develop this more. But I think the most important thing that I want people to do is share what they learned from their experience of going through our simulation. That education, like Cassie said, is one of the most important things that matters in this simulation, and so we want people to share what they've learned.
Speaker 4:All right, it's time for the last question, so I'm going to ask you both what keeps you optimistic or hopeful about your work in this space in this space For me, just that this is such a unique way of sharing such an important topic about a place that not everyone will get to travel to, but that to me is very important and special to me. So getting to be able to share that and just like seeing all the different ways of teaching people and learning about different topics and I'm really hopeful that this project and that the simulation does teach people and teaches the empathy and challenges people to think deeper about what poverty is and what does it mean to be poor. So I'm very hopeful and optimistic about that.
Speaker 3:I, yeah, I want to completely echo everything that Cassie said and just add on that I hope this experience allows people all around the world to really learn more and engage more, to really take on our model of doing missions, which is learning and listening before doing no-transcript and spending this time with me and with our audience on this really important topic, and I want to thank our listeners for joining us on this episode of Optimistic Voices.
Speaker 2:We like to say it's a big messy world out there and there is no shortage of need, but we here at Optimistic Voices believe that with radical courage and radical collaboration together we can change the world.
Speaker 5:Thanks. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest from us, you can find us at Helping Children Worldwide on Instagram, linkedin, twitter and Facebook Hashtag Optimistic Voices Podcast.
