Members of RLC talk to students about impoverished families during Thursday evening’s Poverty Forum. Margaret Cozens | The Appalachian

Appalachian State University's Aching for Adequacy Residential Living Community (RLC) hosted a poverty forum Thursday in Plemmons Student Union's Roan Mountain room.

The event was designed to help students increase their awareness of poverty and how they can help, said Grant Huether, sophomore middle grades education major and one of the RLC's founders.

"There are things you can do in the community," he said. "It's just like helping out a friend. It's a serious problem, but it's not necessarily a complicated solution."

The event was modeled after poverty simulations the members of the RLC have encountered at other poverty awareness events. Instead of a lecture, the forum was separated into four different stations. Each focused on a different group of people affected by poverty: men, women, children and families. Each station offered a skit, simulation or presentation that illustrated the effects of poverty.

Sophomore political science major Keiko Roy-Carey, a member of the RLC, has herself experienced unexpected financial struggles. She said she wanted to put a face on poverty to help students understand the personal aspect of it.

"It's really important to inspire that awareness that poverty can happen to anyone," Roy-Carey said. "You never know when your parents will lose their job or when you will lose your job. It's important to educate yourself so you can know where to go for help and it's important to help others, because you recognize that this can happen to any of us."

Roy-Carey recommended the Hospitality House, the Casting Bread, Inc. Food Pantry and Appalachian's Hunger and Homelessness Week as opportunities to get started.

Junior elementary education major Cindy Hiller said she attended the event because she plans to teach at a school in the Appalachian region.

"I thought it would be good to see what a child's life might be like because of poverty," she said. "The area where I'm from, you don't really see it as much, but a lot of areas in the mountains seem to have a high poverty rate."

As of 2010, 24.8 percent of Watauga County's population is impoverished and 21.4 percent of children ages zero to 17 suffer from poverty. When combined with neighboring counties Avery, Ashe, Wilkes and Caldwell, the High Country region has some of the highest rates of poverty in western North Carolina, according to data by the Economic Research Service.

Aching for Adequacy is a new upper-level RLC that branched out of the freshman-level Service and Leadership RLC.

"We were approached with the opportunity to start an upperclassman RLC, so it kind of branched off of that," Roy-Carey said.

The RLC, which strives to address and spread awareness about poverty, was created by Huether and sophomore sociology major Lauren Berryhill.

Story: EMMALEE ZUPO, Senior Lifestyles Reporter
Photo: MARGARET COZENS, Photographer