A Round Up Of Live Below The Line

Many people around the world took the annual Live Below The Line Challenge this week and I was one of them and so were my two fabulous friends. We have all found it to be a really valuable experience and have gained a lot from doing it.

Organisation has been the key to making it through the week. I am not a fan of cooking and I am not used to being organised about making lunch for the day ahead. I tend to buy food on the go and eat lunch as I am walking from one office to the other. This challenge has forced me to be organised; on Thursday I was cooking vegetable and chilli pasta at 7 am in the morning to ensure I had lunch and dinner for that day!

I definitely struggled with the lack of variety and taste in the food and drink that I had picked and I felt trapped by the choices I had made at the weekend, there was no going back. The week did begin well and I felt that I had enough to eat on Monday and Tuesday and I thoroughly enjoyed my sweet potato and chickpea curry! However, I have felt hungry at times since then and have felt even more so running a drop-in session after a baking class and also cooking a full fried breakfast for 10 rough sleepers this morning. Normally, I would be tucking into the fry up too!

On a positive note it was fantastic to forage for wild garlic, if we had had more time it would have been great to have foraged for more.

I have found work/volunteering difficult in the latter part of this week. Yesterday, I had no ability to concentrate and today I just wanted to come home. This is partly due to being hungry and also due to the lack of caffeine. I feel happier now that tomorrow is back to normal but I feel very saddened that for everyone else in poverty this is an ongoing struggle that may feel hopeless and never ending. For me, it was one week and I knew it was going to end but for others they don't know how and when it will end. This has stood out to me the most this week and also how living like this can affect your emotional health. The reality is Living Below The Line can be very depressing. There is very little room for treats or luxuries and to be honest you cannot live healthily on £1 a day.

This week has made me re-think how much we spend on food and has got me even more determined to get involved in campaigning to end poverty. It has also allowed me to talk openly about global poverty with friends, family and work colleagues to raise awareness of the issue.