Guest Post by Barney Samson from The Global Poverty Project
That’s exactly what the Live Below the Line campaign is asking people to do this May, and we want to give you the chance to join in and blog about it.
£1 a day is the UK equivalent of the extreme poverty line – below which some 1.4 billion on our planet live every day.
Having been around extreme poverty in Africa, I honestly thought that I knew what it meant to live in extreme poverty. I’d seen it in the rural communities of Swaziland and through the times of hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe.
Given all of this, I have to admit I didn’t think I would gain anything personally from the experience. But, the thing that surprised me the most during those 5 days was that I was suddenly overwhelmed with a real sense of understanding. Five days of having so many choices removed from my life. Having to sit and think about how I could eat from £5, making tough decisions: do I buy two oranges or some slices of bread? It was like a light bulb went on, and to my complete surprise I suddenly felt like I wanted to call some of my friends in Swaziland and Zimbabwe and tell them that I actually get it now.
That’s why we’re so excited to share the opportunity to Live Below the Line with the Fuelmyblog community – to put the challenge out to you to spend a day or five on just £1 a day, and get the word out there about it.
We would love for bloggers like you to be taking part in the challenge and writing about it – take a look at www.livebelowtheline.org.uk/partners/fuelmyblog for more info and to sign up!
As an added incentive, the writers of our favourite 3 blog posts about Live Below the Line in the next week will be invited to interview Lord Jack McConnell and Baroness Anne Jenkin about the campaign and then come to a special event at the House of Lords on 4th May to meet them.
Leave a comment if you have any questions, Kevin and Sylvie have agreed to take part and hopefully they’ll be blogging about it too!
Disclosure: Fuelmyblog is not being paid for this post, we support the campaign and will be taking part
Interesting idea. Will definitely blog about it, and consider taking part.
Excellent idea ……. however I’ll have to persuade the terrible Goddess to join in which is almost as daunting.
Thinking about it I suppose I could participate on my own ……. I’ll go and have a chat ……..
Wow, £1 a day, that’s some challenge. I would LOVE to take part but I think I will fail miserably. What a great experiment though. I take it the £1 is per person? As a ‘greenie’ this will unearth a lot of ethical challenges for me because cheap food often comes at a huge ‘cost’ for the environment and our health…
I am shocked to hear that people live for £1 a day!! Can’t believe!!!
@Liveotherwise: so how do I actually share the blogpost I’ve written? I went through to the participate thing, and that seems to have signed me up to a fundraising challenge. Which wasn’t in the blogpost above, and quite frankly, isn’t really what I wanted to do. Am happy to raise awareness, not so happy to be asking ppl for money.
Would love to know how everyone got on with this? I know myself i would find it impossible to do as i spend at least £2 a day on drinks alone
I did this week with my husband and we were amazed at the results. It really got us thinking about the issues. Even more so after living on the £1 a day and then on the day after having to pay £6.49 for 1 tea, 1 coffee and 2 slices of toast and jam at a motorway service station. We had the money but we thought of all those in developing countries who are marginalised by having no income.
I may have to give this a try.