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, healthcare, 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: 1

Your Familys Province: Kampot
Family Housing Choice:

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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: Male ( 14-18 ) Kwon Minho ( Aboard )

Character: Male ( 8-13 ) Kwon Jonghyun (Died)
Character: Male ( 8-13 ) Kwon Jinki
Character: Mother Kwon Jiyong
Character: Female ( 14-18 ) Kwon Kibum (Abroad)
Character: Female ( 14- 18 ) Kwon Taemin (Abroad )

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Character Summaries:
___________________________________________________________________________
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.

Character Description
Name: Kwon Jiyoung
Gender: Female
Age:40
Personality: strong, very responsible, always thought of her family first
Description: Hard working mom with 5 children, her husband dies just after her last children
Kwon Jinki was born. She was very depressed but she need to stay strong in order not to
make her child worried. Time pass and many men try to hit on her but thanks to her 2 little
boy that protect her from them.
Name: Kwon Kibum
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Personality: Kind, intelligent, unique, family first
Description: At first mother didn't send her abroad but as she see that they don't have
enough money she volunteer to go abroad by herself. As the eldest child she is very kind
and unique. She is very beautiful and intelligent. Same as her mom she always thought
about her siblings and her mom first.

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Name: Kwon Minho
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Personality: Family man, very determine.
Description: When he was young he was a very bad boy until his dad fell ill and he realised
that they don't have that much money. After his father died he often saw his mom cry and
collapse because of stress and over work. From that time on he is determine to be a hard
working man who can support his family and make his mom happy.
Name:Kwon Taemin
Gender: Female
Age: 15
Personality: Bright, always happy, active learner
Description: She was very sad when her mom decided to send her to work abroad because
she has to leave all her friends here. Shes a very bright girl and is the oasis of the family.
Shes always making everyone happy when theres problems. She has always dream of
studying one day.
Name: Kwon Jonghyun
Gender: Male
Age: 13
Personality: Lazy, sport boy,
Description: A lazy boy who wants to be an astronaut one day. Even though he has a really
big dream he never think it will come true, because of his background and everything. He is
always playing with his friend and is quite an athlete, his favourite sport is foot ball.

Name: Kwon Jinki

Gender: Male
Age: 11
Personality: Shy, smart, well-mannered
Description: He is the cutie pie of the house. He is often shy and is always aware on what
other think about him. He is the longest child of the kwon family and everyone in the
neighbour adore him. He is also well-mannered and like to help others. He is a very hard
working and want to go to Europe one day.

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Monthly Diary:
___________________________________________________________________________

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 tradeoffs.
It is essential that you keep good, detailed notes.

Month 1:
-No child get education. At first we are planning to send one but we dont
have enough money to do so. The positive thing about this is that all kids can go to do
work and earn money. The negative is that all of them are stupid and dumb.
In the future when we save enough money we might send a child to school.
-2 children got send abroad, 1 boy and 1 girl. The reason that we send them is
because at first we only plan to send the boy but when we calculate everything we dont have
enough money. The positive is that we earn more money by doing so. The negative is that
there are risks of the son getting sold as slave and the daughter might got sold into sex trade.
-Everyone got only food and vegetable the whole month. The positive is that
they will get more health and dont fell ill The negative is that they don't get enough protein.
-Everyone got clean water. The positive is that we don't get germs from the
dirty water. The negative is that we have to pay for the clean water.
-The shelter is made from corrugated metal. The positive is we wont get ill
and get more health. The negative is we have to pay a lot for the metal.
-Firewood every day. We can stay warm and can cook food. But we have to
pay every day for everyone.
-Sanitary product for everyone. Everyone will have good hygiene but we still
have to pay for it.
-Everyone health is 35% except female and male who go to work aboard are
-10% health.
We plan to do like this every month and save the money for health checkup.

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Month 2:
-No one got sick
-No one got hurt
-We decide to send the eldest sister abroad to be able to send the money back
for education for the 2 boys. We dont know what will happen to her.
-The 2 boys got send for education (+30%), but got send to work for 2 days/
week so -10%. The two boys got +20% health. But we have to pay.
-Give rice, vegetable, and meat to mother so +35%. We have to pay more but
we got more health in return.
-Everything else stays the same as month 1.

Month 3:
-Landmine Disaster: everyone in the area
-Kwon Jonghyun (male child) died (RIP). We got $70 from the
government.
-Kwon Jinki (male child) doesnt get hit. Eventhough he didnt get hit
but he saw his brother died and his mom got hurt and probably help his mom to the hospital
-Kwon Jiyoung (mom) got hit and got a high aid ( government cover
for the medical costs and $10 per month.)
-100% income for 2 months.
-70% income from now on.
-Gave Kwon Jinki rice, vegetable, and meat. Plus 35% health.

Month 4:
-No one got sick.
-No disaster.
-We decided to upgrade the shelter to concrete. Plus 30% health.
-Both of the member (Jiyoung, Jinki) went for health check-up. Plus 25%
health.
-Mom got Micro-Finacing Loan and got doubled income and can work for 6
days without decreasing health.

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-Next month we plan to bring back one daughter.

Why not this month? Because we calculate out all the income and we
will loose too much money and we decided to wait for the next disaster first then
bring her back.

Month 5:
-No one got sick.
-No disaster.
-We decided to bring one daughter back and give her education. The rice,
vegetable, and meat, clean water, firewood, concrete shelter, sanitary products, and health
checkup. Even though we got less income we are sure that its better for the kids life and
safer with family. We let her work for 2 days.
-Next month we decided to bring another girl back and left the boy there
because we need him to help pay for the education for his siblings.
-Our expense is more than our income but we can manage with our saving. If
we run low on money we can send the kid to work. Then we forgot to plus the government
money for the injured mom but we are still short on 2 dollar, so we decided to only give the
kids rice and vegetable to eat and we are no longer short.

Month 6:
-No one got sick
-Got affect by drought. -15% to all heath and wellness (2months), -20%
income for all workers in the country (2months). Cost of food +20%, cost of water +20%.
BUT we got aid and everything got -50% so -7.5% health and wellness, -10% income, +10%
food, +10% water.
-We decided to bring back another girl and now we only have one boy abroad.
-At first we are planning to bring the boy back too but we calculate and see
that we dont have enough money to survive the drought so we decided to delay that and wait
for a better chance. If we have month 7 we would surely bring him back.