Village in U.S. Teaches about Worldwide Poverty

A development group, Heifer International,   has built an educational global village near the U.S. southern city of Little Rock, Arkansas representing housing in various poor areas of the world. American school and business groups come to the village to learn what it is like to live in developing countries and spent a night in the global village to experience some of the hardships.
Those are some testimonials written by those who took part in this initiative.
Rebecca:
I was also apart of the experience shown here (in Zambia) and it opened my eyes to the world around me, to get a small taste of the deplorable conditions of some residing the poorer countries. It is something everyone should take away and learn how to help others. I was lucky to attend RMSEL and have a chance to take part in the Heifer project.
Emma
I was also there, I was in the Appalacian cabin. It showed me how you need to cooperate with other people, even if you're in a really terrible mood because you're cold and hungry. My 'family' could not start our fire, no matter what we did, so we eventually ended up giving some firewood to the refugees when they lit it for us. I also figured out just how much I take for granted, like electricity. Our class goes on camping trips twice a year, but then we have the light of the stars and moon to show us what we were doing. In our cabin, we had no light at all, and eventually ended up using the adult's cell phone as a makeshift flashlight to cook our dinner with.
Alicia Ferrufino-Coqueugniot
No amount of film could have shown the immense imprint this experience has made upon me.
Privilege is some times blinding. We have our iPods, TVs, cell phones when many don't have the basics such as water. When you are surrounded by comforts you sometimes distort reality, the reality of our world. After Heifer I hope everyone else took back what I did. Just appreciating what you have isn't enough. Us being the future we have to take the power that we still have to make the difference we think is right. We must continue to be passionate about our world and finally be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi said.
Thank you Heifer.
Our opinion
We think that this is a very important initiative that should be repeated in our countries. It 's a way to realize, through direct experience, for us who live in the affluent society of what it means to actually lead a life on the edge of survival and how many things we use unnecessary or wasteful. If we all learn to save some more, we could use the rest to help those who really need.