Thousands of people will be attempting to live on £1 a day to raise awareness on the effects of poverty, which go far beyond simply hunger
One point four billion people are living in extreme poverty. That means they are currently living on less than £1 a day. To put that in context, that is over 20 times the population of the UK. Can you imagine living on that little? Well that is what we’re challenging you to do by participating in Live Below The Line this April.
From 29 April to 3 May, along with thousands of others, I am taking on the challenge of spending no more than £1 a day on food and drink. I find it astounding to think that such a large proportion of the global population is still living under such harsh conditions and hope the challenge will be an opportunity for me to reflect on the root causes of poverty which see millions go hungry every day.
For many individuals living below the poverty line, limited school infrastructure impacts their ability to go to school. This then has a direct effect on their future employment opportunities. Instead of school, they may have to work to earn money to support their families. Farming and other manual labour work requires a lot of energy which one would struggle with if they hadn’t had enough to eat. About 824 million people go hungry or have an unstable food supply; 500 million of them suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Another challenge for below poverty communities is that a lot of time may be spent in search of a clean water supply. Worldwide, 1.6 billion people have no access to drinking water. Two hundred million hours are spent each day collecting clean water mainly by women and children. This is time that could be spent more productively in working to earn money or better, studying at school.
Access to good quality healthcare is also be a real issue. Eighty per cent of those living in a developing country rely on local healthcare in the form of ill equipped clinics and local traditional healers. Some countries have as little as one doctor per 6,000 people, compared with one doctor per 350 people in industrialised countries like the UK. This poor access to health care services accounts for many preventable deaths.
It is important to understand that external forces have played a large role in the underdevelopment of countries. With an increasingly globalised world, global decisions, policies and practices have worldwide consequences. For example, developing countries have been made to open up their markets to global competition, better known as trade liberalisation. To attract investment they compete with one another by reducing wages and providing cheaper resources. This means the standard of living for the population becomes increasingly worse. This, coupled with corruption in companies and governments, means that it is difficult for a country to progress.
The solutions to poverty are far from simple. One of the greatest issues is simply a lack of awareness. Some people truly do not understand the state the world is in, the scale of suffering that occurs on a daily basis, and find it difficult to relate to. The Live Below the Line campaign is a great way of personally connecting, giving us a glimpse of what it would be like to live off £1 a day and an opportunity to raise awareness among friends and family.
While we may think it’s going to be tough to live on £1 a day for five days, those living in extreme poverty struggle with this amount daily for everything: food, travel, clothes, healthcare and other expenses. I hope that participating in Live Below The Line will be the start of a commitment by me and the thousands of other participants to work towards a world where everyone has enough to eat and people can rise above the poverty line.
Are you ready to Live Below The Line? Sign up here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-made.
Image from: http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2010/02/waiting-to-be-registered-3/