Know: Poverty in a Haitian Village
Understand: The relationships between poverty, gender roles, and family
Be able to do: Examine a poverty simulation and reflect on the game
Step 1: Play the game
Ayiti: the cost of life
Step 2: Discuss with a neighbor the following questions:
- What was the correlation between choices made, your respective outcomes, and the constraints faced within the game?
- How the did your own lives and situations compare and contrast with those of the family members in the game?
- Did you have any gender bias when you assigned different activities to the family members?
Step 3: Play the game again with a partner and try to be fair between male and female family members.
Answer the following questions on the blog.
1. What was it like playing the game?
2. What was the game about and how would you describe it to a friend?
3. Which primary objective did you select, and why? (Get several answers.)
4. What types of decisions did you have to make about the family members while
playing the game and trying to achieve your objective?
5. What strategies did you use? For example, did you combine work and school, or
did you send everyone to work? Which worked? Which did not?
6. Why would parents choose to devote so much effort to sending their children
to school?
7. How many of you were able to keep the children in school?
8. What obstacles did you face in trying to keep them in school?
9. How do the situations and options in the game compare with those in your own
community?
10. Why might access to education be a challenge in another country?
11. What factors would make it easier for the children in the game to gain access to
education? What conditions could be changed and how?
12. How did gender play into your decisions about the family?
