Ben Clifford

What Live Below the Line did to Ben Clifford

, a fundraising challenge to live on a food budget of £1 a day for five days. The aim of the fundraiser is to draw attention to the lives of 1.2 billion people who live on less than a £1 a day and raise money for charities that help some of these people. I fundraised for SCI, a 

, which creates and scales deworming programs with impressive cost-effectiveness.

I was surprised at how difficult I found the challenge. First of all, it was very time consuming. Thankfully I had lots of advice from other people who had done the challenge before, but even so, planning out my weekly shop took up a lot of time and poor planning meant I had to do an extra shopping trip in search of cheaper oats. Second, the food was very boring. I didn't expect this to bother me but I found myself craving variety and a bite of my friends' tastier food. But the biggest difficulty for me was how restrictive the food budget was on my decisions. I couldn't do anything out of routine, for example, forgetting my lunch for work became a stressful scenario. But I also had to miss out on social experiences as simple as having a drink with friends. All of this sounds relatively trivial but when compressed into a week has an impact on your life experience. To claim that this was anything like as difficult as the situations people actually living in extreme poverty face would be preposterous, but I do feel I gained a better appreciation of the power of money and the role it has in our lives.

One of the hardest things I find about challenges such as Live Below the Line is how to react to such an experience. What should my take away be? There's something grotesque about realising how difficult it is to live on a restricted budget and then blowing the equivalent of my week's food budget on a breakfast of French pastries, without changing my actions.

What do I do with the realisation that I undervalue the experiences I have and that most of life involves a cost which is a luxury on a global scale? I'm not sure there is any completely appropriate way to respond.

The most important thing for me is not to let this realisation result in inaction. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of inequality and not do anything. For me capturing that passion to help and make sure something really tangible happens involves doing something practical, easy, but powerful. It's also something anyone can do:

 to charities like SCI that dramatically improve lives.

Review your percentage at a later stage if you wish.

This doesn't radically change my way of life, I still eat croissants, but it does have a huge impact on the lives of other people.

You can still donate to my campaign here.

 I reached my target of £2,000, but the more donations to SCI the better!

Live Below the Line

Most of us don't like talking about money, but a crucial part of taking compassion for others seriously involves appreciating the power of wealth.

There are two facts about money that motivate me to help:

1. I am rich. From putting my intern expenses into the 

 I know that I am in the richest 14% of people in the world. This isn't because I have crazy expenses, I can expect to be much richer in the future. The average person in the UK is in the top 3% of earners in the world. We can get a better understanding of why this is the case when we consider that 1.2 billion people live on a pound a day.

2. Our money can do an incredible amount to help people living below the poverty line. I can provide a pill that will cure someone of intestinal worms at a cost of 50 cents, by donating to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). It is incredible to think just how many people I can help when I give to the most effective charities.

 challenge to draw attention to these facts. Live Below the Line is a challenge to live on a food budget of a £1 a day for 5 days. This is the amount that 1.2 billion people around the globe live on for food, travel, shelter, everything, everyday. You might think that a pound will go further in developing countries but this figure is adjusted for purchasing power parity, meaning that 1.2 billion are living on the equivalent of what £1 would buy in the UK.

The challenge I am taking part in won't come close to the everyday struggle involved in living in extreme poverty but I hope to highlight the disparity in wealth and the comfort that having excess money provides. I am also donating the savings I will make during the week (plus some more to round up to £100) to SCI and I am hoping to raise £2000 in total. This will fund the equivalent of 4000 tablets to rid kids of parasitic worms. Keeping this in mind puts in perspective the real value of our money.

I hope others will join me in making a donation and having a huge impact. If you'd like to sponsor me you can donate at 

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/benclifford

Ben is a Philosophy graduate from the University of Warwick, where he founded the Warwick chapter of Giving What We Can.

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Ben Clifford

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What Live Below the Line did to Ben Clifford

Live Below the Line