This is a chance for our community to come together and in a small way show our commitment to those whom we work to help every day.
In an expression of solidarity with people throughout the world who struggle with food insecurity, InterAction challenges you to join us in the Global Hunger Challenge and live on a food budget of $34.33* during the week of Sept 17-24, 2010.
This amount— equivalent to the average weekly amount a local Haitian is able to spend on food—will require some sacrifice.
You will be asked to write short blog posts during the week and take video/pictures of your meals and grocery buying experience. We will post a selection of participant blogs/photos/videos on the InterAction website. You can also tweet throughout the week using the hashtag #HungerChallenge.
All participants who successfully complete the week will be invited to an event during InterAction’s 3rd annual Progress Against Poverty Week, October 12-15. A drawing will be held at the event for a $100 donation to the winning participant’s charity of choice. Read more about Progress Against Poverty Week here.
We appreciate and hope you reflect upon the fact that we live in a wealthy society with inherent comforts that shelter us from truly experiencing the day-to-day trials of living in poverty. Our goal with this effort is to draw attention to the continued existence of global poverty. We hope to provide a reality check to those in U.S. foreign policy circles regarding the immediate need to reform U.S. foreign assistance.
* We reached this number by multiplying $1.25 per day (the majority of Haitians live on this amount or less per day) by the number of Haitian gourdes required to buy an equivalent amount of goods or services in the United States (purchasing power parity), which the World Bank calculated as 24.9 in 2008. The average American spends 15.757% of their income on groceries (this number was unavailable for Haiti), which gave us our final number.
