TEEEM Hosts “Poverty Escape Room” to Teach Empathy & Inspire Change

RIDGEWOOD, NJ – More than 100+ middle and high school students from across New Jersey recently took part in a transformative learning experience at a workshop organized by TEEEM (The Empathy Equality Entrepreneurship Mission), a nonprofit that teaches empathy and social entrepreneurship. The workshop’s standout session was an immersive experience called the "Poverty Escape Room", a hands-on activity designed to deepen understanding of the challenges faced by individuals living in poverty.

An Interactive Experience to Understand Poverty

The Poverty Escape Room was not a typical escape room. Instead of solving puzzles to “break out,” participants attempted to navigate the daily struggles faced by individuals living in poverty. Students were assigned the true story of Grandma Leah, a grandmother raising three grandchildren born prematurely with prenatal drug exposure. They then moved through different stations—representing real-life places, such as a school, a gas station, a food bank, a pawn shop, and a WIC program office—where they were forced to make difficult financial and logistical decisions. While most were not able to “escape” poverty in the time given, the goal was to understand its complexities and challenges.

“This workshop provided students with a powerful, hands-on way to step into someone else’s shoes and experience the tough choices people in poverty must make every day,” said Taylor D’Alessio, Executive Vice President of TEEEM. “By immersing themselves in these challenges, students developed a deeper sense of empathy and a stronger motivation to create positive change.”

Lessons in Empathy: What Students Learned

Through the Poverty Escape Room, students:

• Gained a heightened awareness of the emotional and psychological impact of poverty
• Recognized systemic barriers and structural inequalities that contribute to poverty
• Reflected on personal assumptions and biases about those affected by economic hardship
• Understood the complexity of surviving in poverty, where small setbacks can have long-term consequences
• Engaged in critical discussions about real-world solutions to break the cycle of poverty

Following the activity, students participated in a reflective group discussion to process their experiences and explore ways to take action within their communities.

In addition to participating in the Poverty Escape Room, TEEEM’s annual Mid-Year Workshop was an opportunity to teach students additional business skills to strengthen their school’s TEEEM chapter and its social entrepreneurship initiatives. Each school partners with one of TEEEM’s eight global communities in need, including the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Grandma Leah, the Poverty Escape Room subject, is from. The conference also celebrated the many new schools that joined TEEEM this year—nearly tripling the organization’s size from 30+ to 85+ schools, expanding beyond New Jersey to across the country and into Canada.

TEEEM (The Empathy Equality Entrepreneurship Mission) is a Ridgewood, NJ-based nonprofit providing K-12 schools and universities with free resources to equip students with real skills to make a real impact through its Social Entrepreneurship and Empathy Programs. By partnering schools with under-resourced communities worldwide, students develop competencies in leadership and global citizenship while addressing modern challenges. TEEEM can be infused into a class or club at any level and can be customized for each school, empowering the next generation with the skills and mindset to drive meaningful change—one project at a time. TEEEM is currently working with 85+ schools throughout the U.S. and Canada, reaching 2,000+ students, and helping communities in 8 countries: Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya, Peru, Uganda, Ukraine, and the United States. For more information, visit www.teeem.org, or follow on Instagram and Facebook, @TEEEMglobal.