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Live Below the Line - Where it all began
 

As someone who works at the Global Poverty Project I’ve heard all the stats a million times – especially the main one – ‘1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty, surviving on just US$1.25 a day.’

Even though I’ve spent quite some time living in the slums of Bangladesh, I was never able to get my head around what this actually meant.

I could kinda get 1.4 billion. It’s 1,400,000,000 individuals… the population of India… about 1/5th of the world’s population. Basically, it’s a lot of people.

But US$1.25 – I couldn’t really get my head around this figure. The World Bank draws this line in the sand… but I didn’t get what it meant to fall on the wrong side. I knew it was a tiny amount, and I knew the struggles of my friends in the slums of Dhaka, but I couldn’t comprehend what it meant to live on this amount.

One night, over a few beers with my housemate Nick (the General Manager at the Oaktree Foundation), we started talking about projects we were working on, and the difficulty of communicating the lack of choice and opportunity for those living below the extreme poverty line.

We both had a general understanding from our travel experiences (we’d met in Bangladesh) but we couldn’t think of a way to explain what it actually means to live on US$1.25, and how we could explain what it means to pay for all your food, housing, medicine, water and education costs – with the money that we would spend on a bus ticket.

We started to think about what US$1.25 buys you in Australia (that’s $2). We were certain it wasn’t possible to survive on even that amount of food. In fact, we were certain that you’d have to be crazy to try.

So, I decided that I would be crazy – I took on the challenge for three weeks in September, and documented my experiences.

It didn’t take long for me to shift my perspective on life: I struggled with the lack of variety in my diet, with hunger and an absence of flavour (eating two basic meals a day, which looked a lot like this).

On top of the incredible perspective I gained, I saw the transformation that occurred around me.

Friends who had never shown an interested in my work were suddenly engaged with the reasons for my sudden change in eating habits.

My experiences living below the line created a window into the world of extreme poverty.

While I can never fully comprehend the obstacles faced by the 1.4 billion amazing people who face unthinkable odds every day, I understand enough to know I have to do something about it. More importantly, my time below the line gave many of my friends their first glimpse into the challenges faced by those living below the line.

I hope you’ll help me create such windows all around Australia, by signing up to Live Below the Line this August at www.livebelowtheline.com/globalpovertyproject.
Posted by Rich Fleming - GPP Australia General Manager in Poverty, Aid, Global Health, Education, Hunger, Technology, Corruption & Governance, Enterprise & Trade, Women & Gender, Fairtrade & Ethical Purchasing, Water & Sanitation, Environment & Climate, What Can I Do?, Polio for column Action Stories on Jun 16th 2010, 10:14
Comments: 5 | Post a Comment

Comments

16/06/10 10:22pm - Posted By Clara - Reply to this comment
This is not to denigrate your quest for a practical way to get people to understand poverty, but something that comes up when I discuss this stat with friends is "yes, but the cost of living is very different in those countries so it's not the same as living on $1.25 as, relatively speaking, $1.25 buys you a lot more in some countries".

Could you clarify that for me?

As I said, I think it's a great idea to really bring the reality of poverty home to people, but does the $1.25 actually translate into the Australian economy where the average property rents are in the hundreds of dollars/week?

C
17/06/10 9:22pm - Posted By Simon Moss - Reply to this comment
@Clara - thanks for the question.

Without getting too technical, the international poverty line is adjusted for purchasing power, so that the line is the equivalent of what you could buy in America for $1.25 in 2005. There's a solid explanation of this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

We've adjusted that into current Australian dollars - it works out just under $2 a day. And, to make it even easier, we've said that's just for food - not everything else. You can see how we've calculated it at http://livebelowtheline.com/about/why-1-25/

The reality for the world's extreme poor is that they are living off this amount for everything in life - not just food.

And finally, to touch on your point about rent - most of the world's extreme poor don't pay rent, because they either squat on land owned by others, or because they live on customary land to which no one claims title. It's the equivalent of people living in your local park, abandoned buildings, and un-used Council and government land. This makes people in poverty even more vulnerable, as governments can either refuse to admit these people exist, or move them on.
30/06/10 7:29pm - Posted By Brendon - Reply to this comment
Hi Lads....I just wanted to say what a great idea and is well worth the cause. although i could not possibly attempt this challange as of yet you have my full support all the way... =] =] =]. Good on ya boys and keep up the good work.
01/07/10 12:40pm - Posted By Jessica - Reply to this comment
When I was an overseas student, I spent about $2 to $3 per day on food during the first one year and a half when I didn't have a job.

I purchased a lot of eggs (was still a bit above $1.5 for a dozen a few years ago in Easwood Chinatown), milk (the cheapst brand, cannot remember the price now), bread (the cheapest one was $0.95, very dry ), chicken wings ($2 to $3 per kilo). These are basically for the protein.

I seldom even look at any vegetible or fruit over $3. I found lots of vegetible and fruit were under $2, like carrots, onion, pumpkin, cabbage, tomato and potato, as I spent quite some time search for speical prices in different stores.

I always cooked at home. Sometimes, I felt very depressed, and went to super market to buy some homebrand snacks for about $1. My then favourite snack was Scottish finger, only $70+ a few years ago.

For about four months, I walked 40 minutes to the uni, and another 40 minutes back to my rented place, a very small room for $100 per week.

Finally at the last year in uni, I found a job in a restaurant and ate a lot of the free meal, and increased about 3 kg. Luckily I had the awareness of control my weight.

Spending so much time in poverty, some people might develop sympathy to the poor, but I thinkmany people in my situation could actually lost sympathy for them. Because people who are tough on themselves, are tough on others as well. At least I don't sympathize anyone in this country who live on welfare and complain the money was too little. I survived on half of the lowest welfare, so they should be able to do it as well. For those poor people living in developing countries, they just cannot escape poverty unless there is some changes in the government. And some family just have determined to have more children than they could afford. They just chose to be poor. Then nobody could help. Only some of their children, either with education or natural wisdome, could break the family curse and plan better future for their own lives.
28/07/10 7:04pm - Posted By Jodie - Reply to this comment
Dear Jessica,

While you have a valid point, and it is possible to live on less that $2 a day for food, I think you are missing the point. Most of these developing countries do not have the luxuries we have. They don't have the opportunity to buy in bulk as we do, there fore saving money in the long run and getting extra food for the dollar.

And with this $2 they also have to pay for medicine if there is any available and anything else they might need. No one chooses to be poor. A lot of the time people have such big families because the chances of a child in those situations to survive past childhood are very very low, so they have more children to help them out at home and at work to support each other. Also, there are often few or none medical professionals in the area and there is little education on STI prevention and contraception. I've even heard of stories of the local government telling the poor that condoms are actually evil.

Education is essential here. If an entire area can be educated adequately and are feed and nourished and healthy they can break through the poverty line and become self-sufficient. That is what this whole thing is about. I do hope you can understand, especially after you yourself struggled with eating enough food.

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