The Options Committee of Making Kenora Home is proposing the sixth poverty challenge, A Walk in Other’s Shoes. This year, we have asked our local business community to take the challenge.

Participants have been asked to attempt to stay within a social assistance benefits’ budget. A single person on Ontario Works would receive $305 per month, $10.00 per day, or $50.00 for the five-day period. A couple would receive $468 per month, allowing a daily budget of $15.60 or $78.00 for five days.

The budget includes all food and drink, entertainment, some personal supplies and transportation costs. Each participant will be given a daily challenge card, which will reveal an additional challenge to be completed before the end of each day.

The participants will experience some of the hurdles that people living on social assistance face. It is hoped that the event will raise awareness and break barriers for people living in poverty. The challenge takes place February 16th until February 21st, 2016.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

We Are So Fortunate

I was once told that you should never criticise someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticise, you are at least a mile away and you have their shoes.
The last time I did a poverty challenge was in 1967 and it was for real. My Mom moved from a dumpy house into a really dumpy house, mostly because my step father was an alcoholic and he drank most of their income. This was his second world war legacy, addiction to alcohol and nicotine to help deal with what would be diagnosed today as PTSD, but there wasn't any help in those days.
Anyway, I wasn't emotionally prepared to go further down the dilapidated house slide, so I decided it was time to leave home. It happened that it was payday from my construction job and I had almost $100 left after giving Mom some money that I owed her.
I took a room in a $3/night hotel in East Calgary and it turned out to be as bad as the house I had just left. I couldn't get the window to close and was very cold that night. I upgraded the next night to a nicer east end hotel that cost $4.50/night. It is odd that after almost fifty years I can remember how much I paid for the rooms. I thought I had enough money for two meals each day. I had to take lunch to the job site each day and I would alternate between breakfast and supper each day. That got me through week one. I forgot that I needed to buy gas for the car to get back and forth to work. Gasoline was $0.45 a gallon then.
During week two I only had enough money to buy lunch each day, a sandwich and an apple. It was not anywhere close to looking after the calories I was burning, as we were working physically for ten hours a day on a scaffold installing ceilings on commercial projects. Today most people would ask their employer for an advance. In those days, asking for an advance amounted to asking to be laid off. Suck it up and keep going. I never have been so hungry in my life as I was during that two week period.
Finally payday arrived. I went over to the York Hotel for supper and ordered veal cutlets with mashed potatoes, gravy and boiled vegetables. What a feast. I would have done almost anything for a meal like that during those past two weeks. Oh it tasted so good! My stomach had shrunk. I couldn't finish it. I fought back tears as I paid the bill for supper and then had a good cry when I got back to my car. I found a rooming house for the next month and left there for my own apartment after a month. The meals in the rooming house were almost as meager as the two week, lack of income induced diet I had endured.
I was lucky. I had a good job where I was able to advance quickly and it also paid for my university education. I have been blessed with good skill sets, an ability to learn and an abundance of stubbornness, discipline and work ethic. Not everyone is as lucky and it is so much easier to give up when you are facing long odds and challenges that you feel you cannot overcome.
I am looking forward to the five days of challenge because it will reinforce how fortunate we are and the incredible challenges that so many in our society have to face daily. We will not be able to operate the challenge fully because of where we live, out on the lake about a thirty minute drive from town. Not a place where economically challenged people could consider living. We will deduct an "in town" allowance for utilities from our five day stipend and go from there. Certainly a glass of wine with dinner or a wee dram of malt will be out of the question. Something to look forward to at the end of the five days. We are so lucky that we know when our challenge will end.
Thanks be to God!
Fred.

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