OK so I moved to Toronto in January and was lucky enough to come across Raising The Village, an amazing organisation working with villages in Uganda. Their mission statement is: ‘Empower communities so that they are able to determine their own futures and foster self-sufficiency to eliminate the need for further funding’. Couldn’t have said it better myself! Part of my volunteer role with Raising The Village has been writing up the field reports straight from Uganda so I have first hand knowledge of how innovative and successful the work they are doing is. I highly recommend reading up on their work and supporting them in any way you can!

Another part of my role has been to promote Live Below the Lineand of course, if I’m promoting it I have to participate myself right?! $1.75 a day for all food and drink for five days. I’ve just done a quick calculation and last week my take out coffees alone add up to almost $25. $25 a week on coffee!! Next week my budget will be $8.75 for EVERYTHING!

So lets be honest – planning and budgeting are not really my thing. I’m fortunate enough to never have had to worry about not having enough to eat; in fact in our image obsessed society the opposite is often true, worrying about eating TOO MUCH food which seems ridiculous when you consider what a struggle it is for a large proportion of the population to get a nutritious, satisfying meal even once a day.

Sure I’ve gone through times when money has been really tight but these times have usually corresponded with me not working so I could travel so I had a choice to be poor and choose experience over money. For 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty, THERE IS NO CHOICE.

I recently watched a TED talk on the correlation between choice and happiness. The theorist’s point was that the more choices one has, the more dissatisfied one will feel with their decision and this can be applied to all aspects of life from what ice cream flavour to pick to whether or not having children is a good idea. This is a typical ‘first world problem’ – “Oh dear, life is so hard, the amount of salad dressings on offer is making me depressed” but I do believe Barry Schwartz has a valid point, one that will be put to the test next week when my food choices are taken away from me. Of course the point of this challenge is not to make me happier but if this is an added I’m definitely not complaining.

So obviously I’ll stop drinking coffee, but what the hell am I going to eat. This blog has prompted me to get organised. I’ve just visited a lively supermarket in the heart of Chinatownand bought the following:

The remaining $2 ish will be spent on vegetable oil, soy sauce, salt and pepper from the cupboard which I will cost out as accurately as possible.

Hmmm, doesn’t really look like a lot of food for five days now I’ve written it all down – panic!!

Anyway it’s done now and I’ve got to say I’m so impressed with my Chinatown groceries. Everything is half the price of No Frills (the Canadian budget supermarket) and on the receipt you can find gems such as “Happy Shopping Day!” and “returns must be in original condition with all accompanying literature”. It was definitely worth running the streetcar gauntlet at peak hour with shopping bags (a scary experience let me tell you!).

I’m not going to bore you all with pictures of my rice and vegetable meals but I will let you know how I’m getting on as the week progresses. I intend to make this a permanent lifestyle choice – no one needs to spend $25 a week on coffee. Think of all that money I’ll have to spend on other things like MORE TRAVELLING!

Raising The Village have now raised over $20,000 from donations so thank you so much to everyone who helped make this happen and remember there’s still lots of time to sign up or support financially!

besos xx