Modern Heroes By Sveta Loginova 10a

What is it? Live Below the Line is a campaign that's changing the way people think about poverty—and making a huge difference— by challenging everyday people to live on the equivalent of the extreme poverty line for 5 days.

How did it all start? In 2009, Rich Fleming from the Global Poverty Project and Nick Allardice from the Oaktree Foundation in Australia, were living together in a shared house. Nick and Rich shared a common passion for alleviating poverty. Many of their conversations highlighted how hard it was to truly understand the lack of freedom and choice that living in extreme poverty entailed. Together, Nick and Rich saw the opportunity to take this concept to thousands of citizens across the world to help them appreciate the reality of extreme poverty, and in doing so raise critical money to continue the work needed to end extreme poverty. And so, Live Below The Line was born.

How does it work? Live Below the Line is challenging individuals and communities to see how much change you can make out of £1. By living off just £1 per day for food for 5 days, you will be bringing to life the direct experiences of the 1.4 billion people currently living in extreme poverty and helping to make real change.

Extreme poverty – what does it mean? When we say ‘extreme’ poverty we mean the poorest people in the world. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than £1 (or $1.25 US dollars) per day. And right now, 1.4 billion people in our world live in extreme poverty. Live Below the Line believes that we have an obligation to reduce that number dramatically.

If you joined the challenge: 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: For the five-day period you can spend no more than £1 a day on food and drink. This means you have a total of £5 with which to buy all ingredients for your meals. For items such as salt, pepper, herbs and spices, simply work out the cost of each item per gram and budget your shopping proportionally. You cannot accept ‘donated’ food from family or friends.

Celebrities, who did it Ben Affleck Tom Hiddleston Hugh Jackman Bonnie Wright Josh Groban Sophia Bush