£1 a day

We're taking the challenge of living below the extreme poverty line, spending just £1 a day, to raise money for charity, but also to experience it and enhance our compassion. People all over the world have less than £1 a day to live on, which has to provide food, shelter and utilities. We have so much provided for us, but we are going to eat for just £1 a day. The challenge doesn't begin until May 2012, but you can read about last years experience here.

Why Live Below the Line

Monday 26 March 2012

Live below the line is close to my heart because we plan to adopt, not just any orphan, but one of the world's poorest.

Actually, that's not strictly true. We plan to adopt from the 75% of the worlds population who we consider to be the world's poorest, but who are statistically much more average than we have ever been.

Maybe this video will explain it better than I can, but live below the line reminds me that somewhere, out in the vast world that I have no comprehension of, one or more of our children is currently living on less than this.



The end of the week

Friday 16 March 2012

There has been little to no posting from us, mainly because I got really sick and ended up in hospital.


Although I have easily lived on less than a £1 a day for about eight days (so no need to withdraw your sponsorship ;0) ) we do feel like it was kind of a cheat and not really the experience we'd hoped for.

With that in mind, we are going to be doing our live below the line week again later in the year.

Hope you'll keep up with us then.

Kj
Xxx

Unbelievable

Saturday 10 March 2012

I'd planned our meals down to a perfect budget for the week, still GAPS friendly, with a £1.02 contingency fund - then Matt announces that he is going to eat lunch and probably breakfasts at school.

This is a problem, because it reduces our joint grocery budget from £10 for the week to £6.66 for the week.

Goodbye salad leaves, goodbye eggs, and probably goodbye home made yoghurt.

I need to rebudget, but right now I have the chicken pox and I can't think clearly.

One thing is for sure though, I am not sending Matt to the shops without a list of exactly what to buy.

He'll come home with peanut butter.

One Week to go...

Wednesday 7 March 2012

So there's only one week left until we start the 'Live Below The Line' challenge, and this year it's going to be harder than ever. This is on the most part because although I said I wasn't going to start the GAPS diet until after live below the line, we actually already started and seeing the improvement in our health, I don't want to go back.

I recently watched a documentary called 'Food Inc' too.


Now it's not just about health, but an ethical decision to want to stick to the diet. How can I justify getting sponsorship to raise awareness of extreme poverty, whilst buying products which exploit the worlds poorest and most vulnerable people?

That's right, people.

It's not just the animals that are abused in battery farming. Illegal immigrant workers are used for cheap labour in slaughter houses throughout the industry, whilst the subsidised corn prices in the US put third world farmers out of business and create famine, and genetic copyright laws are putting farmers under crippling debt or out of business.

If you haven't seen Food inc, you really should. You can watch it on netflix, who will give you a one month trial for free if you sign up with your facebook details, no obligation and you can cancel right after you watch it.

The most heart breaking section of the documentary is when they follow a family who have just $1 a day to buy food, so they buy fast food burgers from a 99c menu. The parents want to feed their children better, but they take a trip round a supermarket and show you that they can't afford broccoli ($1.29) or pears ($1 would only buy two, which wouldn't fill them up for the day). One of the reasons they can't afford any more is because the father is on medication for severe diabetes - caused by their diet. They can't afford the medication and a change of diet, and don't want to risk losing the father by coming off the meds.

These are the decisions faced by families in extreme poverty every day.

I'm going to be making some really difficult decisions about what I eat for the next week. I think that homemade yoghurt is going to be key once again as it only costs me 55p to make just over a pint, but I'm honestly not sure where else I can save. Some very careful budgetting is going to need to happen if we are going to eat real food in an ethical way and stay below budget.

Unfortunate events

An unfortunate twist to live below the line this year, not only will I be attempting to do it on GAPS, but I have been up since four am today vomiting.

Please pray that I get better quickly.

I was hoping to use my fat reserves to get through a rather lean weak, but if I'm already depleted its going to be really tough.