For those who didn't follow us last year the basic idea is that from the 7th-11th of may we are going to live on less than £1 a day. This is supposed to simulate the extreme poverty that 1.4 billion people around the world live in.
Our experience last year told us that it is achievable, but not at all pleasurable. There's absolutely no wiggle room, and you can't afford to get sick as there's not budget for any medicines.
So what can you buy with £1 a day?
Not a bus ticket, not formula milk for a baby and certainly not a magnum ice cream.
But the reality is, as hard as we found this, we still aren't even close to experiencing poverty like many others do. We are only budgeting £1 a day for food and drink. We haven't included living costs like heating, rent and travel (luckily we live where we work, but this isn't true for many).
We also aren't going to be including the children until they are much older and able to understand what's happening. This means that we get to spend the whole £1 on ourselves each day, where plenty of mothers around the world have to go hungry to be able to feed their starving children.
There are a few things we'd like you to consider doing this year.
- Taking part in Live Below the Line yourself. You can read the rules and sign up here.
- Consider sponsoring one or both of us (we're raising money for the same charity, but can't help getting competitive about it!)
- Just follow our blog. Raising awareness of extreme poverty is one of the reasons we are taking on this challenge, so we'd love for you to keep reading and share with us in this experience.
Blog posts might be sporadic over the next three months, but we promise to update at least daily during the challenge.
If you do decide to get involved and want to blog your experiences too, let us know so we can link up.
