{"id":6223,"date":"2013-09-23T07:26:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T21:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=6223"},"modified":"2017-10-24T16:33:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T05:33:00","slug":"seeing-how-others-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2013\/09\/23\/seeing-how-others-live\/","title":{"rendered":"seeing how others live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at church we participated in a slum life simulation game facilitated by Tear Australia<\/a>. In the game our family had to make paper bags to a good standard and sell them to shopkeepers in order to earn money to live off. <\/p>\n

During the course of the game our house burnt down and we had to move to a new house. One of our children contracted measles and we had to pay for her to go to the doctor in order to survive.<\/p>\n

We needed to make enough money to pay our rent, buy our food etc. It was expected that by the end of the game we should have earned enough money to send a daughter to school, which we were able to do. We did manage to survive, and managed to stay out of “under the bridge” which is where you had to go if you were evicted or didn’t have enough money to purchase food. We finished the game with only a pittance left over.<\/p>\n

Through the game, I felt panicky. We needed to keep making bags in order to earn enough money to live off. In the first round, we did very well, making many more bags than the other families (those fine motor skills coming to the fore!). However, in subsequent rounds, when tragedies visited us, I kept wondering if we would be able to earn enough. Would our house burn down again? Would one or both of our children get sick? It was a constant struggle to keep our heads above water.<\/p>\n

We debriefed at dinner last night, talking about how we felt during the game. My children are ages where they were really able to engage with the game. We discussed the sacrifice of sending a child who could be earning money, to school. While the game was set in an Indian slum, we remembered seeing such children when we lived in Ethiopia; children out earning money to support their families. Having lived in a “third world” country really helped us to see how yesterday’s game for us, is real life for some people.
\n

\"Rural<\/a>

Rural marketplace in Ethiopia<\/p><\/div>
\nIt was a really valuable experience and one I would highly recommend to anyone. If you are in Australia, and would like to learn more about Tear Australia’s simulation games, they have a listing of all available games on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at church we participated in a slum life simulation game facilitated by Tear Australia. In the game our family had to make paper bags to a good standard and sell them to shopkeepers in order to earn money to live off. <\/p>\n

During the course of the game our house burnt down and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-white-threads-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6223"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6227,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions\/6227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}