Live Below the Line

Beginning tomorrow, my family and I will join many other people across the country in tackling the Live Below the Line challenge. So what does that mean? It means that we will each be able to spend no more than $1.50 per person, per day on food. Sound like no big thing? Well $1.50 a day is the equivalent of what people who live below the extreme poverty line have to spend on everything, including food and all of the basic necessities of human life. This gives us $4.50 per day to spend on 3 people. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm confident that with a little budgeting and careful planning (and probably lots on rice and pasta!) we can do it.
We are taking this on for several reasons. While I initially signed on when I heard about it because I am a BzzAgent, I then heard about it on several blogs I read regularly, and many other places in the media. I decided that poverty and food insecurity was something we wanted to talk about as a family, though my daughter is very young, because we are so very blessed and fortunate to have what we have. Neither my husband or myself lived in the lap of luxury growing up, and while we didn't go hungry, both of us remember what it was like to have simple meals and go without extras from time to time. This has so far been a completely foreign concept to Stenni, who has everything her little heart could possibly desire. We are not super loaded by any stretch of the imagination, but she doesn't know that there are people out there who have much less than us. So even if she doesn't get much out of the conversation at this stage of the game, I'd like to at least start it.
The other reason that I wanted to take this on is that I can be one of the people raising money for a very worthy cause. I will be supporting UNICEF. If you'd like to donate to this cause, please click here to go to my personal page. I will be sharing our journey including stories and recipes with you on this blog whenever I can. I also encourage you to take on the challenge yourself!