Could you live on $1.50 per day? Live Below the Line is a campaign that is challenging us to do just that to help combat global poverty.
“What is unique to our time is that our generation, for the first time in all of human history, can say that we can end extreme poverty,” says Jeffrey Sachs in a Live Below the Line clip.
To get involved, participants can sign up via the Live Below the Line website, pledge a fundraising goal amount, and allocate a partner charity to donate their earnings to.
Last month, musician Josh Groban took the challenge, raising $6,845 and coming in fourth on the leaderboard. Yesterday, Oscar winning actor and passionate activist Ben Affleck wrote about his participating in the challenge on the Huffington Post’s blog. Here’s what the Argo actor had to say:
“The US has five percent of the world’s population and 35 percent of global wealth,” wrote Affleck. “More egregiously, the bottom half of the world has only one percent of the world’s wealth; that’s more than three billion people in the other “one percent”.
“As a nation we both claim a noble position in the world and assert a reputation for fostering freedom, human rights and fairness here and abroad. If indeed we are to live up to that, we cannot abide having some among us who starve. Today I engage in the minor act of eating rice and beans to do my tiny part. I encourage others to do whatever they can, however minimal.”
To take part in Live Below the Line in New Zealand or Australia, go here: www.livebelowtheline.com
