Live below the line this week

If you've been in to the Phonebox Magazine office in Stanley Court over the last few months, you'll have seen the box where we collect donations for the Food Bank, maybe you've even popped something in there yourself. In thinking about helping those who don't have enough food, we thought we'd share an initiative called Live Below the Line, which is taking place this coming week and helps raise awareness and money for those around the world living in poverty.

Live Below the Line encourages people across the world to join together in spending just £5 on food for the week. From 27th April-1st May you can get involved and live on just £1 a day for your food and drink, using your experience to help change perspectives and behaviours, and raise money for a cause you believe in. The aim isn't to replicate what it would be like to live in poverty, but rather to help connect you to the issues you're fundraising for and help you understand in a very small way how people living in poverty have to live every day. Potentially leaving you a little less full than usual, it'll give you an even better idea of the injustice that 1.2billion people have to face every day living on £1, as well as helping you to save money. We so often spend so much money on food and drink, and this could be a week of reality-checking how much we really need to be spending on food and maybe donating the savings.

Since 2011, people taking part in Live Below the Line have raised over £3 million in the UK alone. To take part in it as a fundraising challenge, you can ask people to sponsor you for the week as well as fundraising and donating the extra money you would have usually spent on food for that week. The Live Below the Line website offers loads of ideas, including recipes, fundraising ideas, school challenge ideas and more, why not take on the challenge and get involved!

Money money money

Quite a talking point in the news over the last week or so has been the figures put forward by Oxfam regarding the shockingly brutal differences between the rich and poor divide in the UK. Oxfam found that Britian's five richest families are worth more than the poorest 20%, and even more stark is the fact that just one family are richer than the bottom 10%. I find it quite shocking when looked at like this, and considering that the richest family in the UK own £7.9billion, it's hard to almost comprehend what that money could do! I very much respect working hard for a living, and these people clearly have done to get to such a place, but the worrying part is that bottom 20%. That's approximately 12.64 million people all living on the same amount as just those richest five families.

It's hard when you hear about something like this, with no idea or physical way of changing things or making things 'fairer', but I suppose it's just being aware of what's going on in our own country. Sometimes we can see poverty as something faced by those in third world countries, when actually it's right here on our doorsteps, so being aware of that and doing what we can in the smallest of ways is probably the best way to respond to facts like these, donating to a local food bank, for example, is just one way to help in a small but effective way.

Sarah