MUIDS Social Studies: Economics

Cambodia Rural Poverty Simulation

Directions: As part of our unit on Microeconomics, you will learn about budgeting,
choice, opportunity cost and trade-offs by participating in a simulation as a family in
rural Cambodia. Much like in real-life, your ability to lead a successful family will
depend on a combination of good decision making and luck. Throughout the
simulation, you will have to deal with real-life problems that rural people in
developing countries must face daily. In Part 1 you will create the characters in your
family and design their personalities. You will make choices about what investments
to make in the family members including education, health-care, food, housing and
access to clean drinking water. In Part II you will lead your family through a 6-month
simulation. When problems happen, you will have to make decisions which will
affect the members of your family and cause you to make difficult choices. You will
also keep track of an ongoing budget with income, expenses and savings. In Part III
you will reflect on the successes, failures and challenges you faced throughout the
simulation.

Your Family Number: 3

Your Familys Province: Battambong
Family Housing Choice: Natural resource house

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Characters:
_________________________________________________________
_______
You will have between 6 and 9 characters.
List their type (ex. Mother, grandmother, male child 14-18, etc) on the lines
below.
Once you have made the list, you must change the order to the following:
Male (oldest youngest); Female (oldest youngest) and number your list.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Character: Grandfather
Character: Father
Character: Grandmother
Character: Mother
Character: Female child(14-18)
Character: Female child (8-13)

Character Summaries:

MUIDS Social Studies: Economics

___________________________________________________________________
________
Character Summaries should include name, age, personality and interests.
Families with less characters should have more in-depth descriptions.
As you make decisions throughout, try to imagine as if these people are your
real family. In Part III, you will have to explain your decisions and how
you believe they helped improve the overall well-being of your family.
Your summary should also include:
o Does the character attend school?
o Is the character going to be working abroad?
o How many days per week does the character work?
o What kind of food and water do they consume?
o Do they have access to health check-ups and sanitary products?
You will make these decisions in the beginning and they will apply to month 1.
All of the information in this sheet must match your budget sheet!
There is an optional 5-point bonus for any group that creates a family picture.

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About Family Members

Fathers name is Rith. He is 45 years old. He is a

hardworking person. He works 6 days a week. He is the
head of the family, without him this situation would
become worse. He likes to plant plants and gardening.
His work is related to trees.

Mothers name is Bopha. She is 42 years old. She is kind and

hardworking person too. She works 6 days a week. She has two
daughters. She is interested in clothing. She likes to fix cloth in her
free time. Her work is also related to clothes. She and her
mother(grandmother) both like to do the same hobby. So when the
international organization provide the loan for her business, they do
the business about clothing.

Grand fathers name is Da. He is 70 years old. He

is very old but he is still healthy. He wanted to work to
help his family. He also works 6 days a week. He likes
looking at old pictures of himself and his family.

Grandmothers name is Kosal. She is

68 years old. She is a small woman with warm
heart. She doesnt want to be encumbrance
for her family so she is still working. She works
6 days a week too. Shes interested in knitting
and making cloth.

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The first female childs name is Srey. She is 16 years old. She
knows the problem of her family well so she wants to help her family by
going to work abroad. Also, shes hardworking but she doesnt like
school and her score is quite bad. She is also interested about other
countrys living lifestyle. So, her family send her to work abroad and she
doesnt attend school. She works 7 days a week.

The second female childs name is Samnang. She is 13 years

old. She is very clever and always get a good score on the test. She
also like to read books. So her family decided to send her to school
because they decided that in the future, she could get well-paid job
and help the family. She doesnt work abroad but she works twice a
week.

All of the people in this family live in a shelter made of natural material. They all have access
to health check up and sanitary products.

Monthly Diary:
___________________________________________________________________
________

MUIDS Social Studies: Economics

In this section you need to keep track of the following:

All major events (positive and negative) that happen to your family. You also
need to keep track of how the event affects your characters income, costs
and health.
Any choices that you make and how the choice affects your characters
income, costs and health.
All choices must include an explanation which shows that you understand the
trade-offs.
It is essential that you keep good, detailed notes.

Month 1: Living in the house made by natural materials isnt good for our family
health. We try to make everyone happy and save the money as much as we can. We
let some of the characters work quite hard and send the older daughter abroad. But
we try to increase their health by letting them eat good food, have sanitary products
and access to health check up. We decided to send the younger sister to school, so
she will have knowledge and improve our family.We also wish that she could get a
good occupation in the future. In conclusion, we have a small amount of money for
saving but no one has negative health result.
Month 2: In this month, no accident or disaster happened with the family. Everyone
still living happily as normal. They are healthy enough to not being sick but they still
eat the same thing as last month because we dont have enough money to let
everyone eat good food. So, we choose to save the money instead of spending on
food for the next month.
Month 3: In this month, an accident occurs to our grandmother. She fell down the
stair and get injured. Luckily that this is not a serious accident for her. The outcomes
is she is not be able to work in this month and it also affect her income for every
other months by 20% of her income. That affect our saving in this month, so we
decided not to send the younger daughter to school and let her work instead. So,
she can helps decrease the expense in this month and also increase the houses
income.
Month 4: In this month, the family encounters big and unexpected disaster which is
drought and crops failure. It has a lot of effect with our family because the family
loses 20% of their income and lower health(health -15%). The cost of water is 20%

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higher more than normal(All 2 months effect). Luckily, we got help from NGO so we
dont have to spend more money on our food supply. We also decided to get loan
from the international organization for mother to started a small business. Mother
starts to do clothing. So, the mothers income is double and lose 10% less health
percentage. Overall, in this month the family really suffer from the big disaster. All of
the family member have poor health because we choose to let them eat only rice.
Surprisingly, no one get sick. We save our money for the next month to eat and gain
better health. We didnt send the younger daughter to school but if we have enough
money we will send our younger daughter to school again.
Month 5: Our family still suffer from the drought and crop failure disaster in this
month. Thats why they still lose money and has poor health same like last month.
Luckily that this month we still have the low level aid and loan. Also, in this month we
have some money left in the savings, so we decided to send the young daughter
back to school and upgrade the food for some member.

Month 6: The major change that happened in month 6 is everyones health level
increasing because we let them eat better food and also let them access to health
center and sanitary product. We also have more money in saving compare to the
first month. The major event that happened in our family is drought and crop failure,
which affect the familys health and income for 2 months. This disaster affected all of
our family member. Luckily that we get the low level aid and loan from the
international organization which really help us increasing our income. We choose to
get loan because we want to improve mothers occupation, instead of farming,
mother will do clothing. Another disaster that happened to our family is grand
mothers accident. But luckily that it only affects grandmother and its not a serious
injury. However, her income decrease and it affects the income for the whole family.
Thats why we cant send the younger daughter to school in month 3 and 4. The
major choice that we decided in this simulation is we decided to send the older
daughter to work abroad. The reason why we send her abroad is because we think
that she can help increase the income for our family member and she can also help
decrease the expense because we dont have to spend any money for her. But the
trade off is it can be dangerous for her because she might become a sex slave.
Another major choice is we choose not to send the young daughter to school in
month 3 and 4 and make her do work. The reason is because the grandmother has
an accident and it affects her income. So we dont have enough money to send her
to school. The trade-off is she isnt be able to go to school at that month. We try our
best to improve the health for our family member. If there is enough money left in
savings, we will use those money to improve the life of each family member. For
example, we upgrade the food for the family member to increase their happiness and

MUIDS Social Studies: Economics

health. We also let them access to health center and sanitary products to make their
life become comfortable as much as possible. But the most important thing is, we
have to have some money left in savings. If our saving is negative, we have to adjust
the expense to make it balance with our income. In the future,if we have enough
saving money, we would like to bring the older daughter back home to make sure
that her life is safe. Moreover, if we can send the older daughter to school, we will do
it immediately to upgrade her education. And we also want to upgrade our house so
the familys health will increase and their life will become more comfortable. We will
let them continue working, and if the money is enough to achieve those goal, were
sure that their life will be much more better than this.