ECU students Hannah Allen, Monica Mayefskie, Elizabeth Smith and Courtney Kirchner review details about their family roles.[/caption]
The students, public health/pre-health or social work majors, spent the afternoon grouped in families, experiencing scenarios based on real experiences. A ballroom at the East Carolina Heart Institute became “Realville,” with chairs grouped into family units. Tables lining the walls became a bank, a school, a pawnshop. And a local “criminal element” roamed the pathways, avoiding police patrols.
Some of the families were dealing with unemployment, incarceration and/or teen pregnancy while others were caring for elderly relatives, grandchildren or younger siblings. Several were living in a shelter.
During 15-minute-long “weeks,” they went to school or work, searched for employment and housing, paid bills, and sought needed services, from health care and child care to food shopping and social services, at stations staffed by nearly two dozen community volunteers.
Junior Hannah Allen and seniors Courtney Kirchner and Monica Mayefskie, all public health/pre-health majors, along with junior social work major Elizabeth Smith made up the “Wescott” family, a married couple in their 50s caring for their two young grandchildren.
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A student holds transportation passes; transportation is a significant challenged faced by families with low incomes.[/caption]
Their monthly income, from Winona Wescott’s full-time job as a cashier and Warren Wescott’s disability benefit, falls $25 short of their basic expenses. That’s before covering transportation costs, purchasing glasses for their granddaughter and paying small fees for school projects.
And it’s before something goes wrong. When Smith, as Warren Wescott, went to pay the mortgage, she was $20 short. At the next visit to the mortgage collector, she was asked for her receipt as proof of what she’d paid. She hadn’t been given a receipt, so the collector told Smith that they had no record of her payment and the full mortgage payment was due. Allen, as Winona Wescott, made a partial payment. Then, when Smith returned to pay the balance, she still didn’t have a receipt. Over the course of the month, the Wescotts paid nearly double their mortgage, but without paperwork —and with an unscrupulous collector — they still owed several hundred dollars.
Difficulty with the mortgage payment meant there was no money for food one week. “I lied and told my teacher that I had an apple for breakfast because I didn’t want us to get taken away,” reported Mayefskie in her role as the Wescott’s 9-year-old granddaughter. School project fees also went unpaid. “It was embarrassing that we were the only ones who didn’t have our two dollars,” said Kirchner as their 7-year-old grandson.
“This is stressing me out,” says Smith, not only in character. “They don’t tell you all the rules. There’s a lot that I don’t know the best way to get done. I’m so frustrated.”
In a debriefing discussion following the simulation, other students reported similar feelings. Common responses included feeling dismissed or like they were getting the runaround or fighting against unfair forces. One student said, “Our family didn’t eat through the whole simulation. And it wasn’t always a money thing — we just couldn’t get there (to the grocery store).”
“Poverty doesn’t always look like what you think it looks like,” said simulation volunteer Cathy Dixon, a family outreach staffer at the Pitt County Health Department. The simulation helps participants, who’ll likely serve families with low incomes, learn what to look for — and to fully see those in their care.
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Volunteer Blace Nalavany, associate professor in the School of Social Work, takes on the role of schoolteacher for the children of Realville.[/caption] GO GREEN
ECU leads efforts for responsible travel
Consider a new holiday tradition this year: green travel.
That’s the goal of the East Carolina University developers of the United States Travel Care Code.
The Center for Sustainability: Tourism, Natural Resources, and the Built Environment at ECU developed the travel care code, which encourage travelers to take a pledge to travel responsibly with 10 easy steps. The tips include learning about your destination, continuing good habits while on vacation – like recycling – and being a fuel-efficient traveler.
“All are somewhat common sense but they’re great reminders,” said Scott Gray, a dual ECU business administration and sustainable tourism master’s degree student who manages the Travel Care Code for the center. One example: setting the air conditioning in a rental at a reasonable temperature and not having it so cold that your sunglasses fog up when you walk inside.
“Anyone traveling should be attentive and aware of traveling green,” Gray said.
The center developed the code to help educate, inform and influence as many visitors and travelers as possible.
It’s available for free use and re-publication for destination marketing organizations, convention and visitors’ bureaus, tourism development authorities, hotels, and other hospitality-related organizations and businesses as a way to promote responsible travel, Gray said. Tourism organizations in Colorado and Florida are already using the code.
In his research, Gray found little on green travel designed for the general consumer. “We want everyone to use it,” he said.
According to Destination Marketing Association International, there is a growing movement of travelers committed to ensuring their impact on tourism destinations is positive and supportive of ongoing sustainable tourism programs.
The travel care code is one way travelers – and the tourism industry – can help.
The code was adopted from a similar one first developed in New Zealand through the work of Miles Media’s Chris Adams, who chairs the industry advisory board for the ECU center. “His company has done a lot in terms of opening doors and hosting the website,” said Dr. Pat Long, director of the center in the ECU College of Technology and Computer Science.
The code supports the adage, “think global, act local,” Adams said. “It identifies where the areas are that travelers can make a difference,” he said. “Obviously this is not designed to be a complete solution, just a partial solution.”
Adams said the center at ECU is a good home for the travel care code. “It gives academic weight and organization and promotion to the care code,” he said.
Faculty and students first started talking about developing the code about three years ago. Whitney Knollenberg, an ECU graduate now enrolled in a doctoral hospitality program at Virginia Tech, used the travel care code as her graduate assistant project. She researched and crafted the 10 items, which were taken to faculty groups and ECU’s sustainability committee as well as industry groups for feedback.
Keturah Mayberry, an ECU graduate assistant at the center who is pursuing a master’s degree in accounting, did initial work to set up and maintain the travel care code’s Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/TravelCareCode.
The center is actively seeking sponsors for the code to help promote and market efforts.
The center, part of the ECU College of Technology and Computer Science, advances research and outreach aimed at affecting change in tourism business practices, public policies and individual traveler behaviors that lessen negative impacts of travel while enhancing travel’s positive outcomes for both travelers and their host communities.
For more information, visit http://www.sustainabletourism.org.