The CHANGE Agent

Economic Security Webquest

Introduction

There is a joke that some adult ESOL students tell about a man who arrived at the airport for his first day in the United States. He was coming to make a better life for himself. He had heard how wealthy the country was and that everywhere you looked you could see money! In fact just as he got off the plane, he looked down on the floor and saw a ten dollar bill on the ground. He decided not to pick it up because his hands were full of bags of luggage. "Besides," he said to himself, " I can always pick up more later."

Unfortunately, many still think it is easy for everyone can get rich in United States. Yet, over 25 million people don't get enough to eat. Why are so many of them still hungry and poor if many of those people are working a full time job? Does this mean that all these people are lazy and not working hard enough to feed themselves?

The government calculates the minimum amount of money a family needs to feed themselves and meet basic needs. This is called the federal poverty line. Yet, many think that an income at this "poverty line" is not enough for families.

Do you think families who live at the poverty line have enough money? Can people work fulltime and still be below the poverty line?

Tasks

Learn what the minimum wage is, and what it is per hour. Then calculate what a person making that amount per hour can make in a year. (Use 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year.)
Learn about the poverty levels in the United States and how it changes depending on the size of your family. Write down what the level is for a three member family.
Take the information about minimum wage and poverty levels and use it to decide on how many people in a family of three need to work full time to stay above the poverty line. Does only one member of the family need to work or do more people need to work? How many more hours a week if there is only one parent?

Now go to the family budget calculator to see if a a family can really survive at the poverty level or if they will need more.

Then, if you have not read the stories about families yet, click here.

Write a drama about a boss and his employee or story about how a family tries to survive.

Process

Work in pairs or small groups and divide the work below. For example, one person can go to the website to learn about federal minimum wage while another is looking for information about poverty levels. Don't forget to also check the links in the resource section below.
Choose one of the following:

1. With another person in your class, prepare a short drama. One of you should write what a single mother of two is telling her boss about why her wages need to be raised. The other should write why minimum wage is enough and what would happen to his company if he raised wages. Then take the roles and act it out for the class.

2. Write a story about how a family or individual survives (or does not survive ) working at a minimum wage job. You can describe a typical day or you can be more creative.

Resources

Minimum Wage: Frequently asked Questions

http://www.epinet.org/Issueguides/minwage/minwagefaq.html

Federal Poverty Guidelines

http://www.ocpp.org/poverty/
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/01poverty.htm

Family Budget Calculator
http://www.epinet.org/datazone/fambud/budget.html

The Family Budget Calculator lets you figure out the income needed for families in order to pay for expenses in their part of the United States.

Information about how to organize for change

Universal Living Wage
http://www.universallivingwage.org/

The Living Wage Movement
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/externalpubs_lwmovement

ACORN's living wage website
http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/

Six Strategies for Change
http://www.6strategies.com/

Evaluation

Talk with your teacher and decide together what you need to do in order to complete this project. You may want to use the chart below to help you evaluate how you did.

	Needs more	Almost there	You did it
Understands minimum wage, poverty level, and the real cost of living in a specific location	Collected all the information	Collected the information and calculated wages from per hour to yearly income to determine if family is above poverty level.	Collected the information and calculated wages from per hour to yearly income to determine if family is above poverty level. Demonstrated knowledge of the relation between the poverty level, minimum wage and what is needed to survive in local area.
Writing a creative piece about the topic of poverty level, minimum wage and the real cost of living.	Wrote a few sentences that shows how hard it is for family to survive on the minimum wage.	Wrote a paragraph that shows how hard it is for family to survive on the minimum wage.	Wrote a complete story or drama that shows how hard it is for family to survive on the minimum wage and includes understanding of how the minimum wage and / or poverty may (or may not) need to be adjusted to the real cost of living.

Conclusion

Make a list of things you can do together with the class to become "change agents" and help improve people's economic situations.
Look at the Resources for Change Websites to see if the list can help you with your ideas and plans for action.

New England Literacy Resource Center
44 Farnsworth Street Boston, MA 02210
(617) 482-9485

Updated 10/01 Questions, comments, or problems please contact Steve Quann