Live Below the Line

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Dates: 21-25 Sept

The reason?

To give a glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line every day – and who have to make $2.25 cover a lot more than food…
Live Below the Line is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, an education and campaigning organisation whose mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action against extreme poverty.

The Global Poverty Project educates and activates citizens to become effectively engaged in the movement to end extreme poverty, and is best known for its world-class multimedia presentation 1.4 Billion Reasons. This feature presentation has been seen by over 100,000 people since 2009 and is delivered in schools, businesses and communities around New Zealand.

We’re passionate about equipping people to make a real difference in fighting poverty, so we focus on connecting people up to the organisations and issues that have the biggest impact. We run Live Below the Linebecause we think that to really fight poverty, we’ve got to try to understand it – and the challenge provides a glimpse of what it is like to live on $2.25/day – a challenge that is faced by 1.4 billion people in our world today.

We’ve teamed up with some of the best charities in New Zealand that fight extreme poverty around the world and provide you with the opportunity to support their work through personal sponsorship as you undertake Live Below the Line.

Live Below the Line is running in New Zealand, the UK, Australia and the USA, with more than 25,000 people spending 5 days living below the line.

Across three continents people will join the movement to tackle extreme poverty – join us.

 

Website

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/nz

 

How it all works?

So you want to Live Below the Line, but you’re not sure what you’re getting yourself into. Ok so here are the basics:

  • During the week you can spend no more than $2.25 a day on food and drink.
  • This means you have a total of $11.25 with which to buy all ingredients for your meals.
  • The full cost of all the items you consume must be included in your budget. This means budgeting for whole packets of food items such as rice, pasta, noodles and eggs etc.
  • For items such as salt, pepper, herbs and spices, simply work out the cost of each item per gram and budget your shopping proportionally. Separate your items before the challenge so there’s no need to be digging around in your cupboards.
  • You can share the cost of ingredients amongst a team, as long as no participant spends more than $2.25 a day or their total $11.25 budget. Working as a team will allow you to pool together funds and do more with your cooking.
  • You can’t grab a cheeky snack from the cupboard unless you include the cost of buying the item new in your budget.
  • You can use food sourced from your garden as long as you can account for the price of production!
  • You cannot accept ‘donated’ food from family or friends, but monetary donations towards your fundraising goals are acceptable, and encouraged!
  • You are allowed to drink tap water – remember you should try and drink at least 6-8 glasses of water each day.