Broke: How I Made Poverty a Game

POVERTY IS NOT A GAME! After growing up poor and working for decades in shelters and halfway houses, Dana Gold created a board game to help people of goodwill understand how families get ensnared in poverty and how difficult the struggle is to overcome structured inequity. The first version of the game was a sheet of paper, circles traced from a toilet paper roll, and movers Dana swiped from her kid's Chutes and Ladders game. The game, now called Broke, creates empathy for people who are poor by giving players the opportunity to experience the stress and frustration of making high stakes decisions with competing priorities and not enough income. Poverty can be fought by people with the passion and will to make change. But how? Playing Broke, now also an app, not only informs but creates the will to make system change a reality. Join Dana in getting frustrated enough, by playing a game, to work for change.