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What Does A Quid Have To Do With Extreme Poverty?
 

What does a quid have to do with extreme poverty? This week thousands of people across the United Kingdom, including me, are challenging themselves to spend only £1 a day for 5 days for all food and drink. As participants in the Live Below the Line Campaign we will get a taste of life in extreme poverty.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than £1 a day for everything; a lifestyle that 1.4 billion people around the world currently lead. Even though this £1 represents a dramatic reduction in their weekly food bill, participants will not experience many of the other areas of extreme poverty. The Live Below the Line campaign teaches that extreme poverty is about more than just money but is fundamentally about a lack of choice and opportunity.

UNICEF estimates that 101 million children, most of them girls, don’t have the opportunity to access primary education. Poverty is the main reason that children aren’t able to go to school. The cost of school fees, uniforms, bus fares, and textbooks often force parents to choose only some of their children to be educated and girls are frequently left out. UNICEF reports that many parents believe that the contribution a female child can make toward cleaning and cooking outweighs the cost of their education, particularly when there are few skilled jobs available for women.

The Live Below the Line campaign gives participants the opportunity to fundraise for one of 22 partner charities including organisations like Malaria No More UK, RESULTS UK, Restless Development, UNICEF, Salvation Army UK, and Christian Aid. Each of these organisations are on the ground tackling issues of extreme poverty and creating a world where all people have a chance at leading a fulfilling life. If you are interested in the campaign please visit www.livebelowtheline.org/uk 

 
Posted by Judith Rowland in Education, Poverty, What Can I Do? for column Live Below the Line on May 8th 2012, 13:45
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This is what I'm eating this week
 
This post was originally published by The Punch on 8 May, 2012.

Yesterday, along with thousands of other Australians, I began the Live Below the Line challenge. The idea is to live on just $10 worth of food from Monday to Friday.Meagre harvest… $8.61 worth of mind-numbingly bland food. 

Why? To stand in solidarity with the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty, which is calculated by the World Bank as living on what you can buy for two Australian dollars per day. Considering the average Australian household’s weekly spend for food is around $200, and a skim latte can set you back $3.50, you can see living on $10 for the week is quite an undertaking.
 
So, what did I do with my $10? Yesterday, I took myself off to the supermarket and bought the following:
 
 - Rolled oats
- Two pears
- Two carrots
- Three brushed potatoes
- A soup pack on sale for $1 including celery, a turnip, a couple of potatoes, an onion and carrots
- Ten green tea bags
- And a packet of red lentils
 
My total came to $8.61.
 
I decided to buy oats as they are quite filling and low GI. Later, I plan to puree the pears, to add some sweetener to my porridge.
 
Next, I knew I was going to need some sort of hot beverage, so I bought green tea. For $1.89, you can get ten tea bags, which allows two per day, and I recycle the bags throughout the day.
 
On Monday morning, I made vegetable soup to last for the week. I “sweated” the onions in water, added the lentils – great for protein and bulking up the meal – and threw chopped veggies in. I have frozen half the soup and refrigerated the rest. I plan to eat soup for lunch and dinner each day.
 
Some people have asked if the $10 has to cover things like clean water or energy, and I’m grateful it doesn’t! I have access to water, a gas stove, and all of my cooking utensils. But for those who live in extreme poverty, this small amount of money is not just for food. It needs to stretch across shelter, health care, education, clean water and sanitation, so this experience doesn’t truly compare.
 
Still, so far, my take out is this: it doesn’t make sense for anyone to suffer from hunger in 2012, and to be lacking in the basic choices and opportunities we have. Taking the Live Below the Line challenge presents a great opportunity to build empathy for the world’s poorest.
 
When I saw extreme poverty first hand, I was impacted for life. It was difficult to express what it means to live in abject poverty to those who haven’t seen it.
 
Live Below the Line is also a good way to start a meaningful conversation about what can be done about the number of people who go to bed hungry each night. I, along with many, ask why is it still the case that a fifth of the world’s population live like “that”, when I live like “this”?
 
Haven’t enough children been sponsored and enough celebrities put on benefit concerts? It is easy to become jaded because the end of poverty isn’t just about encouraging more individuals to give more donations to more causes abroad.
 
Rather, making poverty history can only be realised if our focus is to change the global systems, policies and structures that keep the poor, poor. Things like trade rules, our food production system and considering how better to spend our foreign aid.
 
And that’s what I’ll be pondering as I eat my porridge without brown sugar and pine for cracked pepper on my soup.
 
You can sponsor Julie for Live Below the Line here.

 
Posted by Julie Ulbricht in What Can I Do? for column GPP - Australia on May 8th 2012, 01:00
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Fundraising 101 for Live Below the Line: Part III
 

Here is some fundraising advice from Howard Freeman, author of Making a Difference 2.0: The Ultimate Guide to Online Charitable Giving. Check out part II here.

2. “DO NOT ‘TRY.’ EITHER ‘DO’ OR ‘DO NOT.’ THERE IS NO ‘TRY.’  Even though my wife fell asleep during “The Empire Strikes Back,” these words of Yoda’s stuck with me about raising money during LBL. You have to decide to be “all in.”  Giving this a half-hearted effort will result in even less than 50% results.  Like a friend of mine said when I was learning to surf and got scared of bigger waves, “You have to decide to commit to the take-off.”

Here are a few things I did to get and then stay committed:

  • After the hour-long presentation I heard in Spring 2010 with Hugh Evans here in NYC, I did a couple easy things.  If you haven’t already, then do these first: “Like” the GPP Facebook page, sign up on their mailing list, and consider signing any relevant online petition.  These steps get your heart and head involved, and also now that Facebook has timeline, your friends will see the info in a way that might draw them in.
  • Later, after committing to do the event in May 2011, I watched the videos of everyone from Gillian Zinser to a guy who lived in his car in Austin for five days.  I attached myself to this community in body, mind and spirit, because that helped me ask more often and more sincerely, and it also helped when I felt particularly hungry.  (An important reminder: this exercise is not so much about us feeling hungry or empathic toward the world’s poor. It’s about our privilege giving us the opportunity to build awareness and raise a lot of money in order to eradicate the problem of extreme poverty.)

3. PLAY HARD, AND STAY IN THE GAME.  Once you’ve gotten over your fear, once you’ve committed, then play hard until the buzzer.  Here are some things I did:

  • Created a LBL Campaign Facebook banner.  (This was before timeline, so I don’t know the equivalent in 2012.)
  • Make the first donation. (Can’t ask others to do what you haven’t done yourself.)
  • When someone makes a gift, you’ll be auto-notified by an email from GPP.  I dropped what I was doing and wrote a thank-you email to the donor.  Or in some cases I even called.  It’s excellent stewardship and also good karma.
  • When someone writes you with a question, concern, or gripe, answer it immediately.  This, too, is good stewardship.  Earlier, I mentioned how we fear rejection.  I was incredibly shy growing up, and I still hate asking for money, so when I emailed my entire list, I felt I was putting myself out there to get slammed.  One co-worker complained in an email to me about why I was doing this. (“Isn’t it arrogant to try to act poor for a week?”)  Hugh Evans was at that time rebutting a GOOD Magazine piece on the same topic.  I referred my colleague to the rebuttal, and I tried to be uncharacteristically polite.  He didn’t make a donation, but we remained on great terms after the event.  To my recollection, I did not receive one general complaint from more than 1,200 people in my email list.  Who is going to complain about your wanting to help people who live on less than $1.50 a day?!
  • At the end of two days of fundraising, our team was #1 out of more than 3,000 U.S. teams, and we completed the campaign in that position.  I played off this first-place spot during the week and to the end of the fundraising stage (about two weeks later) in order to raise more money, and I increased my goal along the way, passing the second one as well.  My son’s karate teacher calls this “friendly competition.”  As long as you’re doing things in the right spirit, a healthy sense of competition can only help the larger effort.
  • I made YouTube videos each night and circulated them to supporters and select potential donors.
  • I sent daily email updates to supporters during the fast itself through the LBL email system, which made it easy to send to all or send to those who had donated since a certain date.  It also branded the emails as LBL, so that supporters would feel they were part of something bigger.
  • I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:  I made sure to personally thank supporters immediately after receiving notice of their gifts (GPP allowed us to insert our email address so that we would get gift alerts).  Remember, the way you go about fundraising will reflect on GPP and its partners as well, so practice good stewardship of your donors’ gifts.
  • I thanked supporters multiple times and told them what food I had bought with the money and about my culinary skills (or lack thereof).  I kept it all lighthearted, so they’d keep reading.  Every third or so message I told them about the work of GPP and encouraged them to click over to the GPP website to learn more. By the end of the campaign, one of my supporters said he was persuaded to take his whole family of five through the experience!
  • I asked supporters to share the campaign with their friends via social media and email.
  • I used and perhaps overused Facebook and Twitter (and the #LBLUSA hashtag).  I received only a handful of gifts from people who weren’t my friends, but I was pulling out all the stops and didn’t mind if this was considered a bit aggressive.  Frankly, I was willing to look like an idiot to get more money to help the cause.
  • I was into it 100%.  Online and offline.
  • To underscore one thing I learned more than anything:  I have an amazing community of friends, family and coworkers.  I relied on that community to come through for the cause, and they overwhelmingly did.
  • So I’ll make you this promise: trust the power of the community you’ve developed over the years, ask them to help in tangible ways, and you’ll be amazed at the results and also walk away later feeling even more gratitude that they’re in your life.

Check out Howard's book Making a Difference 2.0 here

 
Posted by Howard Freeman in What Can I Do? for column GPP - United States on May 3rd 2012, 04:59
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Fundraising 101 for Live Below the Line: Part II
 
Here is a post from Howard Freeman, author of Making a Difference 2.0, who was the top Live Below the Line fundraiser from last year.
 
 Though I’ve been in fundraising for almost seventeen years, I’d rarely asked for money from friends for a project I was personally (rather than professionally) involved in. When I did “Live Below the Line” in 2011, I therefore had little experience, and the prospect of raising the money was more daunting than the fast.
 
In 1986, I did a 15-mile walk-a-thon in New York City but signed up my sponsors to pledge by the mile “run.” I figured I’d raise more money. I    stupidly ran the last ten miles in old sneakers and then couldn’t walk the next day. That was it—my personal fundraising one-off—until my next experience nearly twenty-five years later. This past year’s effort was transformative in my own way of looking at the issue of extreme poverty, because in addition to eating less for a week, I took the time to learn more. But it was also a time that focused me on the power of community, so much so that I wrote a book about how robust online giving can come only from strong community. Your personal community—I can’t stress this enough—are those family, friends and coworkers who will both support you financially and keep you encouraged.
 
Therefore, if you commit yourself to the fundraising part of this event, and if you will work hard at it for a couple weeks, you will strengthen that community by allowing them to partner with you, and you will reap a great reward in knowing that you’ve done a wonderful thing for people around the world who will never have the opportunity to thank you personally.
 
Yet there’s at least one big fat obstacle in the way: actually raising the money. So I was asked to share my story from last year, since our team was fortunate enough to end up in the #1 spot out of more than three thousand American teams. While there are certainly some “techniques” and strategies that I think worked—most being those that GPP gives all of us in their online guide—the one thing I credit our success to is the community of my friends, coworkers and family who contributed. Your community will support you if you let them know how important this effort is to you. Make this personal.

Leading up to Live Below the Line, I’ll be sharing my top tips on reaching your financial goal. Here is number 1:

1. “YOU DO NOT HAVE, BECAUSE YOU DO NOT ASK.” Having now done two micro-fundraising efforts; raised personal support from family and friends to go to graduate school; and spent 17 years in professional fundraising, mostly in major donor work—and also as the observant father of three sons who are too young to know better—I can say without hesitation that the #1 reason more people don’t raise more money is because they’re afraid to ask, so they don’t ask.
 
If you’ll notice, children are never afraid to ask for anything.
 
If we’re honest, our hesitation is that we might be too proud to put ourselves out there and get rejected. (Again, children are not proud.) My encouragement is this: assume for the moment the humility of the people whose plight you’re representing and speak to those with means to help. Poor people have a voice, but they don’t have the ear of those you do. Be that go-between connecting the voice with the ear. Trust that those who are reading your email or text, or listening to you on the phone or over coffee, are among those who care about you. They’re not suddenly going to hate you! And take consolation: it’s often harder for them to say “no” than for you to hear it. They will most likely simply not answer your message.
 
Here are some practical tips, which I feel are vital:
  • Email your first message to your entire email list. The reason to do this is that once you start cherry-picking people to include, you will come across a lot more reasons to exclude. You’ll also waste a lot of time. EMAIL EVERYONE.
  • Since you’re emailing everyone, plainly state that in your note. Last year’s LBL occurred during my birthday, so I opened with some quip about sharing my cake with 1.4 billion people, explained the project, and then added an ending like, “I'm bcc:ing my entire directory with this note (yes, it is somewhat impersonal...but it is for a good cause!), and it's likely I have never asked you personally to donate to an organization before. But I'm asking you to please consider it today.” BE OBVIOUS: YOU WANT AS MANY PEOPLE TO HELP AS POSSIBLE. This also underscores your passion about what you’re doing: you’re asking everyone you know.
  • I think I emailed my entire list only twice, maybe three times. After that, I kept it more focused, did a lot of thanking, and did social media (covered later).

Check out Howard‘s book here

 

 
Posted by Danielle Goldschneider in What Can I Do? for column GPP - United States on Apr 24th 2012, 09:17
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The Lightbulb Moment
 

The 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation aims to be a lightbulb moment for audience members, to illuminate, somehow, a clear path ahead and provide the strength of heart to walk it. Everyone has her own lightbulb moment, when she glimpses the part she must play in the larger world (and, correspondingly, bore all her friends and acquaintances describing it). This is mine.

The girls told me that their employers called them donkeys, ânes. In the shed where we talked, they reported this with little visible anger, only small traces of bitterness, just a hint of shame in the creases of their eyebrows. They cried when they reported being beaten, raped, or when they worried about losing their jobs as domestic workers, and some raised their voices in anger; but none seemed particularly disturbed about this dehumanizing appellation.

When I started interviewing domestic workers in Mali for a project during my study abroad, I expected to hear terrible stories. I wanted to know the worst about this system of servitude, and I certainly learned awful things, but the first time I cried in an interview was when a girl told me that her employer called her an animal.

Their words affected me so strongly, I think, because they demonstrated so clearly the foundation of the issue. Domestic servitude in Mali is fraught with problems, and each instance of abuse relies on the basic assumption that the servant is not a person. The women related sagas of long hours, horrible conditions, sexual abuse; and all of these things could be summed up with one powerful epithet: donkey.

It's no surprise that humans have trouble understanding that other people are, well, people. But this particular instance brought home to me how even subtle dehumanization can lead to large-scale abuses. These girls became domestic servants because they had no other options. They grew up, for the most part, in farming communities, and came to the city at age twelve or thirteen to raise a dowry. They wandered the streets until an employer picked them up, and they worked seven days a week, eighteen hours a day. What happened to these girls in their employers' homes was an obvious violation; but the revelation to me was that their rights had been violated a long time before they ever arrived in Bamako, from the moment they were born.

When we see cases of extreme abuse – child soldiers, or victims of torture – we know instinctively that rights have been compromised. It's easy to identify the perpetrator and the victim, and accordingly, we open our wallets and our hearts. But we often forget that people end up in dangerous and harmful situations because they have been denied their rights from the very beginning. When we see someone who is hungry, but not famine-level, ribs-sticking-out, Ethiopia-in-1985 hungry, it's simple to write it off as an unfortunate matter of circumstance, but not really requiring our attention. We see no need to alter the way we live our lives, because the connections are too distant, and the abuse not severe enough.

Before I went to Mali, I certainly planned to donate to worthy causes, to spend a spring break or two with Habitat for Humanity, and read even the most impenetrable articles about famines. After Mali, I found a new determination to stretch my understanding of the human experience, and to address human problems at their most basic level.

Seeing a lightbulb is about understanding in a place deep in your bones, in your belly, that all people have equal value, that no person deserves to be called an animal. That the poverty of whole nations is not an unfortunate circumstance affecting some, but an injustice to all. I can't say that my lightbulb illuminated my path forward with blinding clarity; but I can say that in a small, dark shed in a back alley of Bamako, I talked to some women who made me certain that I should walk it.

 
Posted by Meg Watkins in What Can I Do? for column GPP - United States on Apr 18th 2012, 08:24
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