Text DUN49 £1 to 70070 to donate £1!

Firstly, some of you are probably asking this: Why not Live Below the Line? I've taken part in LBTL in the past, but this year Oxfam has not been included, so having consulted the charity it was recommended I use JustGiving.

Why now? I was going to wait until after my exams, but then the news of the second earthquake in Nepal appeared on my phone and I suddenly mentally woke up. I pledged to do this for a month last year, so that's what I'm doing. This is nowhere near as difficult as living at the site of a natural disaster, or having £1 to buy everything. This is just me not being able to have a pint or a Viallis for a month, not me sampling poverty or anything like that. I have a handmixer and a garlic press. And I'm asking you to give some money to the people who need it, in return for blog posts and grumpy snapchats (EmilyLikesTea).

Why Oxfam? Oxfam is an efficient, international charity which works in the UK and abroad. They work on a huge amount of issues- at the moment their main emergency campaigns are the Nepal Earthquake Appeal, the Yemen, Syria and Ebola crises, and the Water Crisis in the DRC, although they do so much more on top of that. In the UK they work with people in poverty- about 13 million people in the UK live in poverty and the UK's 5 richest families are wealthier than the lowest 20% combined.

So, your money will be going to a good cause. Not necessarily campaigning to end global poverty, but on one of the causes linked to it. Here's an intro to what Oxfam does: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/introduction-to-oxfam

Here's how your money is spent. In every £1:

44p goes to development work.

32p to emergency response.

9p on fundraising.

9p on support and running costs.

6p campaigning for change.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/how-we-spend-your-money

Why are you doing this? 1.2 billion people live on less than £1 a day for everything. That's medicine, school, energy, food, drink, clothes, sanitary products, disaster relief- everything. That's what's defined by The World Bank as "Extreme Poverty". 

Now, I know some of you will be thinking: "But you can get loads for £1 in other countries". This is scaled using Purchasing Power Parity (the number of units of a currency required to buy the same amount of a product as USD would buy in America. To convert that to GBP, you x the PPP for the UK by that USD figure. Then you factor in inflation as the World Bank figures aren't all that recent, which gives us about £1, probably about 96p actually).

You can read more about Extreme Poverty, the World Bank and PPP here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk/the_cause http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-monitoring-report/report-card/twin-goals/ending-extreme-poverty 

So, what are you doing? I will be spending less than £1 per day on food and drink.

Rules? The £1 per day excludes heating, preparation costs and tap water. This does, however, include any treats you try to sneak my way (but not bits I get from the supermarket bargain bin). It can't pass over to the next day, and I can't just eat pizza (that's not an official rule, that's just something to stop me eating pizzas). 

I have to budget for the full amount of an item if I buy it, i.e. one bag of rice, one courgette. I can spread it out over several days- so one stew costing 50p might feed me for three days (trust me, I've made cheaper stew than this before). Things I might already reasonably have in the cupboard I don't have to budget for the full amount- so salt, pepper, flour, teabags etc but not avocados. 

Aren't those rules actually quite vague? Yep. Oh well. You guys can judge- if you leave me a comment I'll try and work something out. 

Are you going to blog? Ok fine. I'll post pictures if my food doesn't look like it's been chundered up as well.

Is this safe? Yeah it's totally healthy. Don't take this challenge if you don't know how to cook. Although I can't grow my own food (well, I could but no student has ever mowed the lawn) I can make my own sauces thanks to my trusty Braun Multiquick.

Is donating through JustGiving a good idea? Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

But if I buy it for you...? Nope, sorry. You're welcome to have a meal with me though- money goes a lot further when food is shared!

Many thanks to Live Below the Line, Oxfam and the World Bank for stats.