It’s been some time since my last post and, sadly perhaps, this one has little to do with education. Instead it’s a plea for support. From today Rosie and I along with our daughters (Olivia, aged 9 and Maddie, aged 7) will be living below the poverty line for 5 days to raise money for Oxfam and Action Against Hunger, and also to raise awareness of the fact that many folk just don’t get enough to eat. We thought very carefully about whether we should let the girls take part, but seeing as they’re so keen we wanted to let them have the chance to see what it was like. If it any point we’re worried about their health we will of course abandon the plan and will fill them up with the organic, fair trade whole foods to which they’ve become accustomed. If only it was this simple for everyone!

Obviously, we’ve all enthusiastically condemned Ian Duncan Smith for boasting that he could survive on practically nothing but Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at Kings College London claims we can live healthily on £12 a week – a calorific intake of between 2500-2000 should be fairly easy to achieve with careful planning.

But this is almost twice our budget. We’re allowed £1 each a day for food and have so far spent £18.90. We’ve planned our meals carefully and will have porridge (made with whole milk) for breakfast every morning, cheese sandwiches for lunch and we have a combination of chicken thighs, rice, pasta, potatoes and passata for evening meals.

I’m a little shocked at some of the things we’ve discovered through the process of shopping for this venture. Oddly enough, grated cheese is much the cheapest way of buying cheese, butter is cheaper than margarine, and it’s possible to get lemon curd for 27p a jar. Really. Also, maybe everyone else already knows this, but apparently the cheapest food in supermarkets is always on the bottom shelf. Everything I normally buy is conveniently placed at eye level; there’s a whole world of stuff that I was only peripherally aware of lurking down there. Ethics go out the window very quickly. It’s been made starkly clear how most of our so-called ethical choices are a sheer luxury. Such indulgences are just not an option on our budget.

Olivia’s photo of some of our food for the week

Day 1

This post is written by Olivia Didau, aged 9.

Today has been our first day of living below the line. For my breakfast I had a bowl of porridge and a piece of toast. This was enough to fill me up until lunch. Then, for lunch we had  a delicious meal of rice, chicken and tomato sauce. Supper was just baked beans on toast and a rich tea biscuit. I’ve just had another piece of toast, and that’s it for the day!

This shows me how some people live and that they have much less than we do. I’m not particularly hungry but I know that this minute thousands of people are starving and maybe rummaging through bins on dumps. I feel quite proud that I’m not just doing this to show how other people live but also to try to experience their hard lives. But I’ll never really know what it’s like.

Here I am being filmed with my sister Maddie

Earlier today a camera man from ITV news came to interview us. And yesterday a photographer from North Somerset Times came to take pictures of us and our food. I’m hoping that this means more people will sponsor us now that they know about it.

I really hope you will sponsor us too. Good night, Olivia.

Today we’ve managed to raise £188 between us – if you feel able to make a contribution, please click here.

Day 2

It’s the second day of living below the line and it’s going well. I’m not too hungry but I do miss having an orange in my packed lunch.

Today I started with an enormous bowl of porridge, my sister Maddie didn’t manage to eat it all at breakfast, but she finished it after school. In my packed lunch I had a cheese sandwich, a creme caramel from Lidl, an apple and a few carrot sticks. It wasn’t too bad and it kept me going until supper. But I’ve got a bit of a confession to make – I went round to a friend’s after school and had pizza! I suppose this might be cheating but if you really were poor your friends might invite you round sometimes.At the moment I’m still feeling quite excited about it all but mummy says I’ll be bored by the end of the week.

Also today, I watched us on ITV news. The whole family were on speaking about why we’re living below the line. I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t in it that much but at the end there was a little clip of the whole family having fun in the garden. I had done an interview but it was cut out although they did say they would only show 2 minutes from all the filming they did. I especially liked the bit where me and Maddie unloaded all our food and chatted about it.

So far we have raised £413 but we really want to get to £500. Special thanks to Tom, Clare and Antonia for writing such nice comments on yesterday’s blog!

That’s it for today, but I’ll write again tomorrow. Good night to you all.

Day 3

Today has been hard. I feel hungry right now, and we’ve just had supper. Olivia though is full of vim and vinegar and is very eager to tell you all about it…

I woke up this morning feeling quite peckish. So, after getting dressed, I ran downstairs and weighed out the porridge. As a family, we are allowed 300g a day, which is actually quite a lot. We also have 500ml of whole milk a day too – but this isn’t quite enough so we have to make the porridge with a mix of water and milk. I’m really glad we bought a bag a sugar otherwise it would taste a bit disgusting!

Putting sugar on my porridge

When I got to school, a lot of my friends said they’d seen me on TV last night. Also, my friend Evie and her family have sponsored us for £25. They think they might try living below the line next year. If anyone else wants to do this my top tip would be to weigh out portions at the start of the week so you don’t run out. My packed lunch was fine, but the same as yesterday’s.

Supper was delicious! We had a huge bowl of chicken risotto made with stock from the bones of Sunday’s chicken. It was big I’ve only just finished it! I’m not hungry now and I’m hoping my tummy will be full until breakfast tomorrow.

So far we’ve raised £683 but daddy says they’ve added it up wrong. Maybe by the end of the week we’ll have more than £700!

Thank you for reading, goodnight.

Day 5

Sorry that I didn’t write yesterday. I was dancing all day and got back very late.

Finally it’s the end of the week and we have survived! Not only have we survived we have also raised £1250 for charity.

For breakfast I had a massive bowl of porridge and then also finished off the remainders in the pan. Lunch was usual and supper was jacket potato with baked beans and vegetables.

It is the last day and we have got some food left. Right now I am finishing the milk with two rich tea biscuits. We have still got a lot of sugar and some rice left but apart from that we have eaten it all. Although on Monday I kind of cheated by going to a friend’s house, we invited her round last night and fed her out of our weekly food. I think she probably had enough to eat but we gave her a yoghurt and an apple, not from our food, just in case, because we were in a dancing show.

The week has been enjoyable and encouraging because we have realised that it matters to a lot of people how penniless people live.
We have been very grateful for all the generous sponsors. Also on the doorstep we found a cake from a friend. Really what we would like to do with that cake is eat it! But we will save it until tomorrow breakfast.

By the way we have raised £1267 which is actually a really big number. And, we’re 29th in the leader board for most money raised! We hope they spend it all wisely. If you didn’t get round to sponsoring us, don’t worry – you still can! Just click the link.

It has been a lovely week and I have really enjoyed writing to you. Maybe we’ll do it again next year?  But that’s it. Goodnight.

Update

We actually manage to raise a grand total of £1,787. See here.

1,787