Living Below the Line for Restless Development

So what’s all this about then?

I am sadly no longer in Cambodia, but back in London jumping on the crowded graduate job hunt wagon. I am reviving this blog, however as I once again find myself involved in another challenge. About a month ago I started an internship at Restless Development, a youth-led development agency doing some brilliant work around the world. I first heard about Live Below the Line on day one of the internship, when I was informed that I WOULD be taking part. Like it or not. Well I am never one to shy away from a challenge, so lets go for it! Live Below the Line is a campaign that challenges the general public to live on £1 a day for food and drink for 5 days. As one of the partner organisation, Restless Development is looking for people to do it on their behalf to raise money to support projects in Africa and Asia. 

The actual campaign is from the 7^th- 11^th May, but along with the rest of the team I am doing it next week (26^th-30^th March) so we can share our pearls of wisdom with those doing it later. As the days draw closer there seems to be a general air of dread, and conversations over lunch all seem to migrate to what food we are going to be eating next week. As a first timer I am caught between naïve optimism and a fear of such hunger that I might mug someone for their burger king on the way home.

Ever the planner, I decided that I would not be caught short by last minute shopping the night before the challenge starts. No, no, no. I am going to put in some solid groundwork and make sure that I am not sifting through the bins of London by Friday.

So last weekend I decided to start my investigations and have a look at how much I can get for my money. Stage one: Lidl supermarket, Kingston. I wanted to document this investigation, but having no subtle picture taking equipment (my lack of iPhone is a touchy subject) I had to take my rather large SLR camera. Dragging an embarrassed sister behind me I proceeded to snap some of the top bargains that I could sniff out. Turns out Lidl aren’t a huge fan of people taking snaps of their 22p mushy peas. Once I had explained to the security guard that I wasn’t from the press and was not writing a report, I thought it an appropriate time to end my first step of investigations. Online browsing from now on I think.

Thus far I have not managed to convince any friends and family to join me, but I have been receiving some stellar advice. ‘Just eat porridge for every meal and you’ll be fine.’ Really? Apart from developing a life-long aversion to porridge, I can’t imagine my digestive system would thank me for that. I think I will respectfully ignore that piece of wisdom. There are, however some good blogs out there with some cheap meals which I am going to look at. Let stage two of investigations commence……

If you would like to do it sign up here https://www.livebelowtheline.com/participants/sign_up?partner=uk-restlessdevelopment

If you don’t fancy it then I would be very grateful for a bit of sponsorship! you can do it here https://www.livebelowtheline.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=Fiona+brown&commit=Search

And here is a bit more about Restless Development http://www.restlessdevelopment.org/

And here are the mushy peas......