Live Below The Line

Live Below The Line is a charity campaign to help tackle extreme poverty, in which for five days the participants live below the poverty line, spending only two dollars a day on food. Tess and I have taken on the challenge this year for the first time! We are hoping to gain sponsors who will donate us money, all of which goes towards East Timor- a country which is one of Australia's closest neighbours but where 40% of the population are really living beneath this poverty line, and a majority of the population are under 26. As well as this, during their recent wars for independance many schools, and educational facilities were destroyed. The money from the campaign goes toward increasing the accessibility and quality of their education, because education is the key to breaking the poverty cycle. Aside from this fantastic cause I'm doing this project to gain a greater understanding through experience of what the billions of people in our world actually endure. So far I have already noticed a level of privilege in ourselves even within the constraints of the budget, privileges of time, resources and education which would not be available to many of the people for whom this is actually their lives. Tess and I spent hours of our time tonight having a great time visiting different supermarkets around the city to compare prices and products, and we have spent the past two days planning and organising our meals for next week. We have done research of how to receive proper nutrition in our diets, and have a wealth of recipes, meal plans and tips at our fingertips. We have access to food co-ops where we can buy small amounts of salt, spices and tea (actually we may not be able to afford any of this but it was great in theory). Basically I'm feeling really lucky about my life. It's going to be hard, but when it comes down to it it's only 5 days of my life to hopefully help the lifetimes of some other people.

Live Below The Line begins on Monday May 5, and I'll continue posting with my updates of how we're going.

If you'd like to donate you can do so online here
If you'd like to join in you can sign up (in the next two days) here
If you want some more information you can find it here