Jodie survives £1-a-day survival challenge

Jodie Gomersall (21) was given £5 to spend on all her food and drink for five days as part of a campaign to raise money to help some of the world’s poorest people through Christian Aid.

The charity is encouraging volunteers to “Live Below the Line” as part of its initiative of the same name, the aim being to recruit 5,000 people across the UK to take up the challenge of spending less than a fiver in five days on all their food and drink.

Jodie has had the chance to see for herself the reality of extreme poverty after visiting Kenya as part of the scheme and said that she wanted to use the experience to highlight the daily struggle of the 1.4 billion people who live below the poverty line.

She said: “Trying to Live Below the Line for Christian Aid was a challenge, but that’s the point of it.

“I met people in Kenya last year who have to live on £1 a day for everything but we’re just budgeting for food and drink. 

“I went to the supermarket to do a big shop and I only spent about £3.50.

“I lived on rice, frozen veg and bread and only drank water all week.

“This is a way of taking one small step towards understanding what 1.4 billion people go through each day, and of raising money to enable Christian Aid to start ending such extreme poverty.”

The Global Poverty Project has joined forces with Christian Aid to raise money towards their work to end extreme poverty in the developing world. 

As part of the project, Jodie, who is from Rawmarsh, spent three months working in an African orphanage seeing how it operates and how people live.

She said: “It was really eye-opening seeing how little people have and living on £5 for five days after I got home made me more conscious about being picky about food.

“Being out there made me aware that not everyone has the choice to be picky.

“It wasn’t quite the same because I just had to cover my food and drink and some people have less than £1 a day to cover all their expenses but it did give me an insight.”

If you fancy following in Jodie’s footsteps, log onto

www.livebelowtheline.org.uk/christianaid, where you can set up your own fund-raising page, share your story and check out recipe tips for cheap meals.