Grade 7-9 students worked together to play "What's It Worth?", a game designed to compare the costs of consumer items to basic necessities for street youth.

The Harsh Realities of Street Life

Kate Raven
By Kate Raven, Communications Officer

Covenant House followed up on their visit to Greenwood in October with a “Reality Check” on December 5.
How do you afford housing, food, clothing and transportation when you have no family support, job or education? What do you need to sacrifice to make ends meet?
 
Covenant House’s “Reality Check” presentation highlights the hardships of living independently on an extremely limited budget. On December 5, students were split into two groups, with Grades 7-9 meeting in the Lodge and Grades 10-12 meeting in the gym. The presenters first highlighted some of the lengths homeless youth have to go to in order to sustain themselves, including stealing, selling drugs, begging and prostitution. Street life, the presenters explained, is inherently dangerous - street youth are 40x more likely to die than their peers with steady housing, and 30% of street youth attempt suicide.
 
Then, each group completed a collaborative activity that demonstrated the real costs of shelter, food, clothing and other necessities. A young person with family support spends about $25,135 per year on these items, while a youth without this support lives on about $11,320 per year - approximately $943 a month, and often less. The two speakers from Covenant House presented real-life scenarios that demonstrated how far this amount goes (or doesn’t go).
 
  • Grade 7-9 students played “What’s It Worth?”, a game in which they had to guess which consumer items are equivalent to the cost of a month’s worth of necessities. For example, does a month’s worth of housing ($650) cost the same as a pair of earphones, an iPhone 7, a Playstation VR Launch Bundle or a hoverboard?
 
  • Grade 10-12 students played “So You Think You Can Shop?” Given a budget of about $850 a month, students had to work in groups to allocate that money to housing, transportation, food, clothing and more. To make ends meet in one area, sacrifices often had to be made in another.
 
We sincerely thank Suzie Tarlattini and Fiona Jack of Covenant House for joining us and speaking to students. Both presentations were a wonderful hands-on way to learn the realities of street life.
 
Greenwood’s Community Service Executives will debrief both Covenant House visits with students at our next assembly on December 12.
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    • Grade 7-9 students worked together to play "What's It Worth?", a game designed to compare the costs of consumer items to basic necessities for street youth.

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