If you've been following the last few posts you may have picked up a common thread. Last Sunday we looked at some statistics - such as, 1.1 billion people live on less that $1 a day, and about 3 billion live on less than $2 a day. For those of you in the UK that is about 65p and £1.30.
I guess if you are living on that kind of money, you probably don't have a bank account or credit card - so essentially if there is money in your pocket you can eat - but if there isn't then you'll go hungry, won't be able to afford medicines...
I wonder how many of us really think about the food that we eat? In a couple of week's time a number of people from church are going to take up the £7 challenge. That is - you have a budget of £7 to cover all of your food and drink for a week. If there are two of you then you have £14 for the week...
Everything you eat and drink must come out of that £7. Suddenly a jar of coffee at £2.50 becomes a bit of a luxury - and don't forget the milk and sugar - a skinny latte from Starbucks is certainly out of the question.
Unlike billions of people in the world you will continue to have access to clean drinking water. So during the coffee break at work - when you can't have coffee/milk/sugar/biscuits (unless it is out of your £7) you can drink water - and when someone asks what you're doing it will be a great opportunity to raise awareness. [Maybe you could even get your friends to sponsor you for the week and donate the money to someone like Tearfund].
You cannot simply eat at your friend's house every evening - that's definitely cheating.
I'm pretty much making up the 'rules' as I go along. But I think that buying in bulk and calculating price depending on how much you use is NOT allowed. Many people in the majority world simply don't have the means to bulk buy and store. [What I mean is that you can't buy 1 litre of cooking oil for £1, but only plan on using 100ml during the week, and therefore say that your oil only costs 10p]. Although if you wanted to get together with a number of friends and club your money together, and then divide your shopping up at the start of the week, or even cook together, that would be allowed. Communities in the majority world benefit hugely from coming together and forming corporations etc. This has a big impact on both purchasing power but also selling power. It also has benefits in terms of forming community.
I've already started to think about a week's shopping for £7, and it's a lot harder than you might think - but I guess that's the point. Once the money has gone that's it. You can't just nip round the corner for a pint of milk.
More to follow...and if you want to join in let me know by adding a comment below.
[A note on comments: when you comment it won't appear straight away, it has to be approved. I don't do this so that I can weed out comments I don't agree with. I do it because spammers comment and hide links to unsuitable websites in their messages.]
