What the world eats

Check out these images of a weeks worth of groceries for families in various countries. Fascinating. I assume that when the image shows a family of four, the groceries are for four people. And when the image shows a family of eight, the groceries are for eight people. Not sure if that's the case or not, but interesting to see anyway. Pay attention to the food available for the African countries. Easy to guess who is living below the global poverty line.


-Selfish Blogger

Lunch Fail!

Lunch and dinner from my fav Thai place

Well, my plans were foiled when my lovely staff decided to buy me lunch for our last day in the office all together. I would have used it as an outreach opportunity, by refusing the lunch and explaining why I'm "living below the line", then asking for financial contributions instead of a lunch out. But one of my staff had an extreme, violent tragedy in her family 36 hours ago, and this just didn't feel like the best time to discuss "the less fortunate."

So I graciously accepted lunch, but said I felt like a light meal. I ordered a cup of tofu vegetable soup and side of brown rice to stay as true to the challenge as possible. I decided to eat half and save the second half for dinner. This would absorb the remaining $1.15 budget for the day. The actual meal cost almost $7.

By 12:30pm when we ate, I was so so hungry. Breakfast didn't fill me up, and I drank lots of water in the hours leading up to lunch to stave off hunger as much as I could. I probably could have finished my entire lunch, but I ate until my hunger was sated and set the second half aside.

By 4:00pm when I left work, I was experiencing all the terrible-ness that comes with hunger: stomach pains, light-headedness, lack of focus, weakness, and a less-than-chipper attitude toward the world. I told myself I could eat when I got home. I left work two hours early.  Driving home I kept thinking "I'm doing this wrong. I shouldn't be hungry. I'm doing this wrong." But then another voice in my head said "No, you're doing this right. This is what it feels like to go without."

It is easy to forget how painful hunger can be when you never experience it yourself, and my closest experience to real hunger is through fiction. Katniss Everdeen talks about "hollow days" in The Hunger Games - days when, no matter how much you eat, you can never get full. Harry, Hermione, and Ron quickly learn that a good meal means good spirits, and hunger means bickering and worse in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have fasted before, but during time off when I would rest and read and take long baths and enjoy the garden - not in the middle of moving and changing jobs! I need all the energy I can muster.

Even in this challenge, I'll never know true hunger. I'm nibbling on the second half of my lunch/dinner as I type (it's how I'm managing to spit our mostly-coherent sentences). Tomorrow, I will have more to eat. One day of being sort of hungry and I'm falling apart. Pathetic. To people who live on less every single day of their lives, I am a spoiled, pampered girl who has never faced hardship.

Help those who do face hardship, every day of their lives: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire


-Selfish Blogger

Live Below the Line

Chances are, most people reading this blog have no idea what it means to be poor. I know I don't. That's one of the reasons I'm going to Live Below the Line in May.

Live Below the Line is a challenge that gives people in the first world a 5 day taste of what it truly means to go without. For 5 days, people taking the Live Below the Line challenge must feed themselves on no more than $1.50 per day - the equivalent of what 1.4 billion people the world over have to live on. That $1.50 figure is the purchasing power parity rate. That $1.50 does not buy more in the third world than it does in the US. 

I've been looking forward to the challenge, and I've been paying close attention to food prices to try and figure out what I'll eat - I'll have exactly $7.50 to cover 15 meals plus snacks. Rice and beans look like my staple. Nothing canned. Nothing from a box. A $0.50 apple is out of the question. I'm hoping to afford a $0.19 banana. If I can make it to the farmer's market, there is a vendor that sells huge bunches of kale for only $2 - enough kale to last me the full 5 days, and leave me with $1.10 per day for rice and beans. It's going to be tough.

Live Below the Line is also a fundraiser, and I'm asking for sponsors to help me raiser $1,000 for CARE (don't be put off by the dramatic music in the video, it's a great cause).

I hope you will consider supporting me and CARE by giving through my Live Below the Line page or by joining my team and taking the challenge.


--Selfish Blogger

Paying Taxes

I've just finished that dreaded American past time: filing annual income taxes. It wasn't painful, especially because I'll be getting both a federal and state refund.

For the first time this year, I noticed some extra boxes on the CA state tax form. CA gives you the option to give some of your tax refund to agencies you care about - those serving seniors, low-income families, animals, and the environment. I'm sure those boxes have been there before, I've probably just never noticed them.

My CA state tax refund was $645. I decided to give $100 back. $50 went to endangered species, $50 went to feeding hungry families. What a simple and painless process for giving! I'm still getting a generous $545 tax refund, and since the money is already out of my pocket, I don't feel the "sticker shock" of writing a check that size. I'm sure I wouldn't have given to these agencies without this simple option.

You can (rightly) make the argument that this isn't giving, it's more taxes. Fine. You're right. But think about how giving vehicles like this would go a long way toward increasing dollars that flow to worthy causes?

There are other, even better, vehicles that make giving easy. Think about credit cards that give your purchase rewards to good causes. Peter Singer writes about corporations that use an optional giving plan on employee paychecks: 1% of your wages automatically goes toward helping people in poverty. The 1% gift is default, you don't have to sign-up for it, but you can opt out if you choose. Most people don't opt out, and so each employee gives a much higher annual gift to charity than they would if there were asked to write a check once a year.

If we ask for more of these kinds of giving options, imagine the impact. They make giving a more present part of our daily lives, and they get money to people in need.

-Selfish Blogger