Poverty is the worst form of violence - Gandhi

How do you feel about the way you live your life now?  Do you feel like you have enough food and enough water?  There is a significant proportion of the world's population who survive on such a small amount a day (£1 a day for food and drink).  The £1 amount is taken to be 'the line', thus 1.4 billion people are living below the line.  How can we, in the developed world, truly appreciate what this means for them?  It is only circumstance that separates us.  We should count ourselves as very lucky, in that we live like we do, and we have the means to by whatever food we like, and can choose what to have for a meal.  A lot of people I have spoken to about this challenge fall into several categories:

1) they are indifferent to the cause and the whole point behind the challenge

2) they are not interested and make up some excuse about why they cannot undertake this challenge

3) they are interested but make up some excuse about why they cannot undertake this challenge

4) they are properly interested

Challenge - eat/drink for less than £1 for 5 days

It is only for 5 days.  I can voluntarily choose to live this way for 5 days.  Over one billion people do not even have the choice to live like this: they have to.

You might say... well, what is this going to achieve?  It will raise awareness of the meaning of poverty - you cannot know what it is like until you try it, and even then, it will only hold a fraction of the truth because we will still be able to travel freely and have a safe place to go to during the day or night.

Can you break out of your comfort zone for 5 days to do this LBLuk challenge with me?

Live Below the Line is an incredible new awareness and fundraising campaign that's making a huge difference in the fight against extreme poverty.

Quite simply, it allows thousands of people in the Global North to better understand the daily challenges faced by those trapped in the cycle of extreme poverty, and builds a movement of passionate people willing and able to make a meaningful difference for those who need it most.

The week of Live Below the Line is a week like no other. From 2-6 May, thousands of people across the UK will spend just £1 each day on food, and use their daily experiences to bring extreme poverty to the centre of conversation in homes and workplaces. We'll all be challenged, we'll struggle without caffeine, and have a faint feeling of being not quite full for the whole week. We'll pool money with housemates, colleagues or family to make that one pound stretch just a little further...

We'll do all of this because whilst we choose to struggle to Live Below the Line for one week, there are 1.4 billion people who have no choice other than to do it every day.

Think about that figure - 1.4 BILLION - that's over 20 times the population of the UK - living every day to live in the most abject poverty.

"It's not that bad," you might say - "£1 goes a lot further in developing countries". - Unfortunately not. The £1 figure represents the amount someone living in extreme poverty in the UK would have to live on.

And for people who live in extreme poverty that £1 has to cover far more than food and drink - we're talking everything - health, housing, transport, food, education... It's impossible to imagine, but it's the incomprehensible reality for an incredible number of people.

Also, please play on www.freerice.com  By getting answers correct (AND learning new words), we can help to donate rice through the World Food Programme.  10 grains might not mean much to you, but it can go a long way to help those who need it most.  Even getting 20 answers is 200 grains of rice.  If 1,000 people did this per day, in a year this would become 73,000,000.  And I am fairly certain you will agree that this is A LOT.

Carol xxx

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