Our Mentors and Tutors were in for a surprise when they attended a poverty training class at City Mission earlier this month. They were expecting a seminar or a lecture on poverty and how it affects the children they care for in Brightmoor.

But what they walked into was something completely unexpected. [Continue reading].

We transformed the City Mission Family Life Center to look like the Brightmoor community, where our students live, play and go to school. After getting over the initial shock of the transformed facility and staff, tutors and mentors had to play the role of children and go through ‘the community’ to find the 8 resources necessary for an individual’s success. The resources, as defined by author Ruby Payne in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty, are: financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, support systems, relationships and knowledge of hidden rules.

“I was really surprised and really appreciated the format of tonight’s presentation, where we actually came in and were put into a scenario,” said first-year tutor Kristen Carulli. “Actually feeling the different experiences that the students we’re tutoring are going through just gives me a completely different perspective,” she said.

Mentor David Salmonson made an emotional connection as well. “Somebody with an education degree would have to have a whole other kind of training in order to teach school effectively in the inner city,” he said after the exercise. “There’s this whole set of issues that need to get handled before the learning even starts,” he said.

The purpose of the poverty training was two-fold. One, to help our volunteers better understand the environement their students are coming from so that they can better relate to them; and for the tutors and mentors to realize how instrumental they are in leveling the playing field so that our students can make it out of generational poverty.

“You bring with you information that our kids don’t have,” City Mission executive director, Nicole Aikens told the volunteers. “That is the gift you bring.”

After the learning exercise, Aikens presented more information from, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The book was instrumental in changing the way City Mission program staff and educators relate to the children and families in Brightmoor.

“We have to level the playing field for our kids and the place to do that is at City Mission,” Aikens said. “Our kids have to understand the concepts of middle class norms, but in order for them to do that, our volunteers have to understand where our kids are coming from.”

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